Summary

8 IT Essentials: PC Harware and Software Companion Guidecalled setupmgr.exe, which is located within the deploy.cab file on the Windows XPProfessional CD.Figure 12-3 shows an example of an answer file.Figure 12-3Sample Answer FileAfter you have answered all the questions, the unattend.txt file is copied to the distributionshared folder on a server. At this point, you can do one of two things:■■Run the unattended.bat file on the client machine. This prepares the hard drive andautomatically installs the operating system from the server over the network.Create a boot disk that boots up the computer and connects to the distribution share onthe server. Run the batch file to install the operating system over the network.Image-Based InstallationWhen performing image-based installations, you should begin by completely configuringone computer to an operational state. Next, run Sysprep to prepare the system for imaging.A third-party drive-imaging application prepares an image of the completed computer thatcan be burned onto a CD or DVD. This image can then be copied onto computers withcompatible hardware abstraction layers (HAL) to complete the installation of multiple computers.After the image has been copied, you can boot up the computer, but you might haveto configure some settings, such as computer name and domain membership.Remote InstallationWith Remote Installation Service (RIS), the process is very much like an image-basedinstallation, except you would not use a drive-imaging utility. You can use RIS to remotely