Unattended setup (Sysprep & unattend.xml) is not working for me

OK, I am unable to find the reason for your unattended deployment to fail. I cannot replicate it. I went as far as trying to pretend I have no knowledge of answer files, just followed the tutorial step by step, and created a new answer file with same settings and components you used. It worked perfectly.

Comparing your answer file to mine side by side, I cannot find any obvious differences.

It's 6:30 AM, I must leave latest at 8 AM and will be away all day, so I can continue in about 10 to 12 hours. Until that, I repeat that the answer file I posted in post #7, with additional information in post #9, worked in my tests both on physical and virtual machines.

Kari

… and just after I posted the above, I started to think about your thread title:

Unattended setup (Sysprep & unattend.xml) is not working for me

Unattend.xml is answer file for OOBE. It does not handle Windows Setup and partitioning, which is done in another answer file called Autounattend.xml.

It is totally OK to combine both, answer file for Windows Setup and partitioning and answer file for OOBE to a single answer file, but in that case, what I said in post #7 applies:

Kari said:

OK, this is the corrected and cleaned answer file. It must be saved as autounattend.xml on root of install media.

I clarified that in post #9:

Kari said:

Remember, save it as autounattend.xml, not unattend.xml on root of install media.

Conclusion: I believe you have had the answer file saved with wrong name. Could this be the case? Does the new answer file work as expected when you use the correct name?

Kari

nomaxtech said:

I'm still at work myself (partially due to this problem) and it's just going on 1:00am here. Once I get these systems back up and running I'll try the answer file you sent. It's a race against the Monday morning clock! I wonder what it could be...

Read posts #7 and #9, once again!

Good luck,
Kari

nomaxtech said:

I'm sorry to put you through that, but thank you so much for your help!

Good to know all is well. No need to apologize, I very much liked "the project".

Kari

Hi Kari
I followed your steps and I have been using my unattend.xml file with my image without any issue for weeks.
Then I told to myself, hey why don't I try autounattend.xml as well...and again thanks to you I was able to make my image file, partition and install, no issue.
Problem starts when two comes together...I put autounattend.xml into root of my install media and I added my unattend.xml directly into Panther folder in the .wim file,
Windows partitions and installs by itself then it asks me user info...
If I delete autounattend.xml from install media, and partition manually, unattend.xml kicks in immediately and sets up everything correctly...

I will try merge both info under autounattend.xml and will try that way, but I still would like to know,
What do you think am I doing wrong?

Edit: Yes when I merged them into autounattend.xml it worked with no issue...I guess I will be using this way, since it is also much easier to edit for different images as it sits in the install media openly...