Chapter 12: Deploying with Answer Files

Overview

Users installing Microsoft Windows XP on their own computers don't often worry about automating the setup program. Instead, they drop the CD in the drive, the setup programs starts, and they answer the setup program's prompts. That won't work in a business because most business users don't know the answers to all the setup program's questions. Automating the setup program prevents users from having to fumble with the installation. Furthermore, as an IT professional, you want to ensure that users have a positive experience so that they say good things about you.

You should still consider automating Windows XP installation even if you are a power user. It makes installing Windows XP more convenient, and options are available to you through answer files that just aren't available through the setup program's user interface.

Microsoft provides several tools that help you to deploy automated and customized Windows XP installations. Each tool has purposes, strengths, and weakness that are different from the other tools in various deployment scenarios. Examples of deployment tools include Sysprep for disk imaging and Remote Installation Service, both of which come with the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft Windows .NET Server family of products. Every deployment method and tool has unattended answer files, which you use to automate the setup program so that it runs with little or no user interaction. The operating system's setup program uses the information contained in the answer files rather than prompting users for it.

Answer files are text files that look like INI files. Answer files have many sections, and each section contains settings. Because this book is about Windows XP's registry and user settings rather than desktop deployment, I only introduce you to answer files.

After you learn the basics, I'll describe two answer file features that specifically enable you to deploy user settings as part of the Windows XP setup process. If you're interested in learning more about deploying Windows XP, see the Microsoft Windows XP Corporate Deployment Tools User's Guide. You find it in Deploy.chm, which is in the Deploy.cab cabinet file in the Support\Tools folder of your Windows XP CD. You start this chapter by learning how to add files to Windows XP distribution files (the i386 folder).