Automating Windows XP Installations

[FatalError]

wow its been like a year since my last visit to this place i miss it sooooo much

anyway enough with being emotional

i was wondering if anyone has info on how to automate installations of win xp with sp2 ...and i'm not talking about deploying it over a domain where u have all the systems with the same specs...i'm talking about getting an image that can be ghosted to a system which will work automaticlly when the system is booted ...i've seen it working so i know its possible , this guy at the local pc store have a ready-to-use image on his drive ...he just ghosts it with norton ghost to the system that needs to get formated and after its done ghosting he just turns on the newly installed system and it works !! i thought XP doesn't work when changing motherboards but apearntly there is something that can be done to make it work even when changing systems...

if anyone can give me some info on how to do it i'd apreciate it alot !!! thanks in advanced guys

[Dark Helmet]

rcently maximum pc had an issue about creating a custom installation, i think there was and articla about it here as well, try searching both forums

[Maurice]

I dont really know what your asking,but you can slipstream xp and sp2 into 1 cd and make it automatically load windows.

[ItsTheSource]

google "nLite"

[johnny45]

Hmm, I think I know what you're talking about...

I have my PC setup with my main 40 gig hard drive setup in two partitions. I use the main one to hold the OS and programs, and the other holds the ghost image i created of my XP Pro install. You can use SysPrep to remove all hardware specific references in the install and upon restart it will search for all new hardware, thus you could ghostcast it to another computer for use. I use this when I'm working on computers around the house, or if it's this one, I can just pop in the ghost CD and have it back to perfection in about 5-10 minutes.

[MD10MD]

This guides a little old but it covers the basic and is what I do to create my custom xp cd's. Link

[FatalError]

thank you all for the comments - they were really helpfull

MD10MD your guide is really good , i went over it and it pretty much answers my question above...
in the "Credit" section of the guide , i noticed the site "UnAttended.MSFN.org" i visited it and now i'm really happy , this is exactly what i've been looking for


thanks