Working with Answer Files
Although it's possible to use an install image to
trigger a remote Vista install, doing so will give
you only a network-based version of interactive setup, forcing the user (or more typically,
an administrator) to manually install the OS.
By pairing an install image with an answer file
(i.e., a text file containing the responses to Windows Setup dialog boxes), you can arrive at a
fully automated Vista install that's customized
for your needs. First, you need to create a master installation by adding an answer file and a
Vista install image to a bootable DVD. You can
then let the DVD run using just the WAIK tools.
Alternatively, you can deploy master installations by using ImageX and WinPE.
Vista replaces Windows 2000's Setup Manager with Image Manager, and the text-based
answer files have been superseded by XML
versions. The XML answer files are harder to
hand-edit (unless you're conversant in XML),
but they're standards-based and more elegant
than the old format. Microsoft has also created
a new Windows catalog (.clg) file type, which is
a binary (i.e., non-text) data file that's managed
by Image Manager and contains the state of all
the settings and packages in a given Windows
image. If you look in the Sources folder on a
Vista install DVD, you'll see a .clg file for each
Vista product edition.
To create an answer file, open Image Manager (click Start Menu, All Programs, Microsoft Windows AIK, Windows System Image
Manager). Then click File, Select Windows
Image and locate a copy of install.wim in the
File Open dialog box. (The file must be on the
local hard disk, not on the install DVD.) Image
Manager will prompt you to select an image.
Typically, the image will include all the standard Vista product edition types.
After selecting the image type (I'll use Vista
Ultimate as an example), click OK, and Image
Manager will mount the image file and create
an associated .clg file. When the process is
complete, you'll see that the Windows Image
pane in Image Manager now contains the Vista
Ultimate image, from which you can select
components and packages. Select New Answer
File from the File menu, and the Answer File
pane will contain new Components and Packages sections, as Figure 1 shows.
Components are internal Vista features (e.g.,
Remote Assistance, Windows Sidebar) that you
can apply during Windows Setup. In Image
Manager, you can specify the configuration
pass—or phase of Windows installation—in
which particular components are installed. Packages are external applications and features
(e.g., service packs, hotfixes, language packs,
drivers) that you can add to an install image.
You can also enable and disable Windows
features via packages.
It might at first appear that there's some
overlap between components and packages,
since you can use packages to enable and
disable Windows features. But think of it this
way: Components are internal to Windows,
and packages are external. IT administrators
or PC makers typically use packages to disable
or enable certain Windows features, overriding
the Microsoft-specified default behavior.
You'll see seven entries under Components
in the Answer File pane: windowsPE, offline-Servicing, generalize, specialize, auditSystem,
auditUser, and oobeSystem. By default, there
aren't any specified packages because this is a
bare-bones install image.
You can expand the Components and Packages nodes in the Windows Image pane to see
which components and packages are available
for editing. You should see many components
and a short list of packages. As you select items
from the list, they populate the Properties pane
so that you can edit properties.
For example, let's edit the default home page
in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) so that it's
a custom location. To do so, expand Components and locate the x86_Microsoft-WindowsInternetExplorer-6.0.xxxx.xxxxx_neutral node,
where xxxx.xxxxx is the version number of the
OS you're installing. Expand the Components
node, then the StartPages subnode. To change
the home page setting, right-click the StartPage
subnode (under StartPages) and select Add Setting to Pass 4 specialize, as you can see in Figure 1. (It's the only option available.) A collapsible set
of component changes is added to 4 specialize in
the Answer File pane.
When you select StartPage in the Answer
File pane, various StartPage properties appear
in the Properties pane, including the StartPageUrl field under Settings. To add a custom
URL, type it in that field and press Enter. After
the new setting is accepted, the text will be
bolded.
The sheer number of components you can
configure can be overwhelming. Let's look at a
few common components and their locations
in the Components hierarchy.
To automatically specify a username, right-click the Components, x86_Microsoft-Windows-Setup_6.0.xxxx.xxxxx_neutral, UserData
setting and select Add Setting to pass 1 WindowsPE of Vista Setup. This component is
used to specify the username and organization and determine whether the End User
License Agreement is automatically accepted.
To automatically add a product key, add the
Components, x86_Microsoft-Windows-Setup_6.0.xxxx.xxxxx_neutral, UserData, ProductKey
setting to the first phase of Vista Setup. Be sure
to change the WillShowUI key to Never and
specify the product key.
To configure packages, expand the Packages node under your install image in the
Windows Image pane. By default, you should
see packages such as FeaturePack, Foundation, LanguagePack, and Product, as Figure
2 shows. FeaturePacks are out-of-band additions, and Vista includes two by default: .NET
Framework 3.0 and XML Paper Specification
(the Microsoft format that competes with
PDF). Foundation is the base OS (aka MinWin)
component on which all Vista installs are built.
Under LanguagePack, you should see at least
two nodes (one for Windows and one for the .NET Framework)—more, if you're using a
multilanguage version of Vista or are manually
adding languages. Under Product, you'll see
the component Microsoft added to MinWin to
build the Vista product edition you're working
with (in this case, the Vista Ultimate package).
Some packages offer interesting customization features. For example, you can go into the
Foundation package and enable and disable
specific features, such as InboxGames (which
lets you enable or disable individual games),
Tablet PC optional features, and the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web
server. To customize a package, right-click it
in the Windows Image pane and choose Add
to Answer File. Then select the package in the
Answer File pane and edit its settings in the
Properties pane.
To add a new package to your customized
install, select Insert, Package(s). Then, navigate
to the add-ons you'd like to install with Vista.
At any step along the way, you can click
the Validate Answer File button in the Image
Manager toolbar to ensure that the resulting
answer file will work. If Image Manager finds
any errors, it tells you where to find the problem.
You can save a validated answer file to a
disk. From Image Manager's File menu, select
Save Answer File and save the file to disk under a name such as autounattend.xml. If you
double-click the file in Windows Explorer, it
will open in IE or your default XML editor. You
can open and edit an answer file either through
Image Manager or through the Windows shell
by selecting Open With.
To install Vista on only a few PCs, the simplest solution might be to create a bootable
DVD by copying a Vista install DVD and adding an answer file to the root. Then, you can use
the customized installation DVD to boot each
PC. Vista should set up in about 30 minutes.
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