The situation:

You have created an unattended installation of windows (using nLite + DriverPacks BASE or other programs), but usually this isn’t enough, you need more things to be done. So we write batch files to do the following silently & automatically:

1. Changing the default input language by creating & importing a .reg file
2. Installing fonts
3. Installing programs like kmplayer, Office (2003), and Adobe Reader
4. Installing .msi (Microsoft installer) packages
5. Installing Microsoft hotfixes, patches & fixes (which you didn’t embed already for whatever reason) with .exe extension
6. Installing a troublesome VB6 (visual basic 6) program
7. Placing a shortcut on all users’ desktop
8. Getting the user input to use later (the only step which requires user interaction, obviously!)
9. Changing the computer name to the name we got by user input in the previous step
10. Inserting commands into batch files from another batch file
11. Changing windows user’s account password based on the user input in step 8
12. Disabling the automatic login behavior of windows
13. Inserting executable files into startup of windows
14. Restarting
15. Continue running batch files after a system restart
16. Configuring files to run only the first time each user logs in
17. Joining the computer to a domain

During these steps we do minor stuff as well, like: creating directories, copying and deleting files, and making delays.

These batch files are originally designed for Windows XP, but most of them are usable for newer versions of windows as well (some may need minor adjustments). I don’t describe how to make the unattended installation of windows itself, or how to work with DriverPacks BASE, you can find out about them by doing a search on the web. I mention the whole design of the batch files, the clues, important notes and the examples all in one place here. So, let’s get started.

Continue reading Batch files for unattended windows installation to take care of additional work →