Work Journal
For Week of August 30, 1999
Page Updated Wednesday, December 22, 1999 10:01 PM
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I have been working on an unattended install of Windows NT Workstation and Novell Client32 for NT. I have been writing a report on it which I will post when I have gone through a complete install and have most or all of the bugs worked out. My first install is going quite well, but I find I have not provided answers for all the questions install asks do to not understanding setupmgr.exe well enough. Examples of things I had to take care of manually are to accept the license agreement, set TCP/IP to use DHCP, and the final reboot. All in all I think not bad for a first try. Now I will have to got through the install configuration file and look for the settings I missed.
I found some additional settings such as reboot GUI, and skip Administrator password wizard page. To get DHCP to be used by TCP/IP I had to manually edit the configuration file. When I get the NT install working I can then work on adding the Novell Client installation to the unattended install.
I have gotten to the point where the only input the NT install requires is for me to accept the license agreement. This is a basic install which only uses the default video driver and while my 3Com NIC does get installed, the resources are stated properly in the install file but when NT is installed and running the port is wrong.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
Found some good information on the Net about unattended NT installations. WWW.i386.com is one of the best resources I have found on NT in general. I knew that the install switch to make Win95 skip the license agreement is undocumented, which made me think the same is true for NT. While I have not found an install switch for NT, I did find line to add to the answer file to make an unattended install skip the End-User License Agreement. I will add this information to the report I am writing on unattended installs.
I also discovered a method to have the unattended install, install a service pack. I don't have time to put things together to test this tonight but I will later in the week.
I made the changes required to my answer file so that the End-User License Agreement is skipped and done another install. This time other than starting the install process this install can truly be called unattended because it has required no attention from me. I still have the problem that the resources for the NIC do not setup properly, but I think I have found the problem and made the appropriate changes to the answer file.
I have done some more work editing my report on unattended NT installs and added some screen captures to it. I am trying not to rush it since I want it to be a good enough set of instructions for others to follow if they choose. Some of the instructions I have found for myself to learn how to do unattended installs, make assumptions that the person using the instructions has some prior experience with creating unattended installs for Windows NT which I do not, which caused me to have to make some educated guesses at times. My goal is to try and write the instructions so that someone following them can get the job done without having to guess or go hunting for answers else where.
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I had to work with Windows NT 3.51 for a while today. It is hard to believe that I once thought the Windows 3.11/NT 3.51 interface was all I would ever need. Today after spending some time with the old Windows interface I wonder how I ever thought it was a good interface.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I found quite by accident that if you open an answer file with setupmgr, and there are any entries in the file which where manually entered in notepad, that they are lost when you save the file with setupmgr. If I had thought about it before hand I would have made a backup of the answer file before opening it with setupmgr. I only lost one entry and have it documented so it was not a big deal to fix afterwards. I just have to revive my old habits from when I used to do some programming, which is to do lots of backups and keep copies of different versions of code so you can go back easily to your earlier work.
The changes I made to the answer file for my unattended install last night only partially fixed the resource settings for the NIC in the test PC. I did some fine tuning tonight and am testing my changes. I started quite late so I'll let the install run and I'll check on it tomorrow.
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The service packs for NT can be extracted to store on a shared drive or to burn on a CD. Extract the service pack into the current directory/folder without launching the installation program by using the command prompt switch /x. (For example, at the command prompt, type SP5i386 /x.)
If you use extract the compressed program file (with the /x switch), you can use installation switches with Update.exe.
UPDATE [-u] [-f] [-n] [-o] [-z] [-q]
-u Unattended mode
-f Force other programs to close at shutdown
-n Do not back up files for uninstall
-o Overwrite OEM files without prompting
-z Do not reboot when installation is complete
-q Quiet mode - no user interaction
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I drove up to Banff this morning for a meeting. It was lovely clear morning, with the sun rising in the east behind me the mountains ahead of me where lit up like a postcard. If I had time I would have liked to have pulled over to the side of the road and just gaze at the mountains for awhile.
The whole day has felt like it should be Thursday. I couldn't shake the feeling till I realized why it felt like Thursday, which dawned on me when I got home from work. I want tomorrow to be Friday so I can find out what my status is at work. My contract is only till Sept 3rd and I have no idea if they have any other projects they want my services for. Worst of all my gut feeling is that Friday will be my last day, which has been backed-up by the way some people have discussed my tiding up some of the small details of my current project.
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The clocks all had to be rest when I got home form work so the power had been out sometime during the day. It was nice to see my 2 main computers still purring along normally as they are now both connected to UPSs. The other systems which are connected to a switch box for sharing the monitor, keyboard, and mouse all needed resetting except the one which was currently using mouse etc., because they stopped booting due to a keyboard error.
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I have been having trouble with configuring the resource settings for the NIC on my test PC via unattended install. I decided a new approach was needed so I set the resources for the NIC to their correct settings after the unattended install and went wading through the registry and was able to locate the values at HKLM\system\CurrentControl Set\Service\Elinl31\Parameters. Looking at the NIC resource settings in the registry helped me learn why I have been having trouble.
The following screen shot shows the resources for the network card in Control Panel > Network > Adapters. I have been having problems setting the I/O Port Address and the Transceiver Type with an answer file when doing an unattended install. What I have found my problem is, is that the Transceiver Type has to be a value from 0 to 2 and I was using values from 1 to 3, so I was using a value of 1 when I should have been using a value of 0. The other problem I didn't realize was with the I/O Port Number. The I/O Port Address is a hexadecimal number and needs to be converted to decimal value before being entered in the the answer file.
The above screen shot shows an I/O Port Address of 0x310. The screen below shows an IoBaseAddress of 0x00000310 (784). The value in brackets 784 is the decimal value of the hexadecimal value 0x00000310. It wasn't till I looked in the registry and the used a scientific calculator that it dawned on me that the value I needed to use was a decimal value (784).
The last changes I made to the answer file for Transceiver Type and I/O Port Address based on my findings outlined above where the icing on the cake. The unattended install went smoothly, and when all was said and done my NIC was setup properly and I can browse my network. A backup copy of this last answer file is now on my backup CD-RW for safe keeping.
Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday / Sunday
I had an eventful bike ride to work today. I got a flat tire which took forever to fix as I had a hard time getting the tire off the rim. This is not normal for me. Usually I can peel a bicycle tire off the rim in seconds, not the minutes it took me this morning. Then after fixing the flat by installing a new tube I proceeded to get another flat. It was the flat foot express the rest of the way to work merrily ( actually not so merrily as I was rather pissed at getting a second flat ) pushing my bike along. At lunch time I took my rear wheel to a near by bike shop where they found a tear in the sidewall if the tire which the tube had been sticking out off. Now a tire with little time on it goes in the trash and I had to buy a new tire so I could ride my bike home.
Well my mood for the day did not get any better as I got no word from my employer on the status of my contract. So at the end of the day I packed up all my tools, disks etc. and brought them home with me at the end of the day.
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Took a break from computers.
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More relaxing and trying not to think about computers.