With Windows 2000/XP, if I want to run an unattended installation directly from CD/ISO, all I need is to add the WINNT.SIF to the i386 folder. If I do this with Windows NT 4.0, it just crashes with BSOD 0x1E "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED", Address blah blah blah setupdd.sys, after the text mode welcome screen, right before trying to setup the partition. The only workaround I found so far is adding a Windows 95 boot floppy as a boot sector (like in Windows 98/Me CDs) which in turn sets up a FAT16 partition with GDisk, then after a reboot, copies the answer file to C: and runs WINNT.EXE /B /U:C:\UNATTEND.TXT /S:%CDROM%\i386. I would prefer to use the text mode setup to prepare the partition since it's cleaner and just better than using a clumsy batch file and external commands. Can this not be done, or am I messing something up?
After a lot of Googling (which didn't help at all), and a lot of hit and miss, I finally got it! 1st problem: BSOD - since it mentions the SETUPDD.SYS file, and the ISO I'm using is from Windows NT 4.0 Workstation OEM "SP1", I replaced the file with the version from the SP4 executable, which allowed the text mode setup to finally work. It probably also works with the version from SP5 and SP6, but not from SP3. 2nd problem: FATAL ERROR on GUI Mode - this was happening right after the GUI mode started, and I was using a WINNT.SIF file created with \SUPPORT\OPK\I386\SETUPMGR.EXE from the CD. The problem was that this tool doesn't add the initial [Data] section which makes the file incompatible. 3rd problem: NETWORK - the network portion of the setup stops if the network card drivers are not included in the CD, or if you have to manually select between half and full duplex. So the easiest solution is to just remove the entire Network section and install it later, so that the unattended installation hopefully works on as many different computers as possible. So in a nutshell, I replaced the SETUPDD.SYS with the version included in the SP4 executable (probably works with any newer version), and used the following WINNT.SIF, which is configured for Portuguese Keyboard and Timezone: Code: [Data] MsDosInitiated = 0 AutoPartition = 0 UnattendedInstall = "Yes" [Unattended] OemPreinstall = no NoWaitAfterTextMode = 1 NoWaitAfterGuiMode = 1 FileSystem = LeaveAlone ExtendOEMPartition = 0 ConfirmHardware = no NtUpgrade = no Win31Upgrade = no TargetPath = * OverwriteOemFilesOnUpgrade = no KeyBoardLayout = "Portugal" [UserData] FullName = "AAABBB" OrgName = "CCCDDD" ComputerName = EEEFFF ProductId = "xxxxx-OEM-xxxxxxx-xxxxx" [GuiUnattended] OemSkipWelcome = 1 OEMBlankAdminPassword = 1 TimeZone = "(GMT) Horário de Greenwich; Dublim, Edimburgo, Londres, Lisboa" [Display] ConfigureAtLogon = 1