Deploying Windows Vista

Working with Answer Files
Although it's possible to use an install image to trigger a remote Vista install, doing so will give you only a network-based version of interactive setup, forcing the user (or more typically, an administrator) to manually install the OS. By pairing an install image with an answer file (i.e., a text file containing the responses to Windows Setup dialog boxes), you can arrive at a fully automated Vista install that's customized for your needs. First, you need to create a master installation by adding an answer file and a Vista install image to a bootable DVD. You can then let the DVD run using just the WAIK tools. Alternatively, you can deploy master installations by using ImageX and WinPE.

Vista replaces Windows 2000's Setup Manager with Image Manager, and the text-based answer files have been superseded by XML versions. The XML answer files are harder to hand-edit (unless you're conversant in XML), but they're standards-based and more elegant than the old format. Microsoft has also created a new Windows catalog (.clg) file type, which is a binary (i.e., non-text) data file that's managed by Image Manager and contains the state of all the settings and packages in a given Windows image. If you look in the Sources folder on a Vista install DVD, you'll see a .clg file for each Vista product edition.

To create an answer file, open Image Manager (click Start Menu, All Programs, Microsoft Windows AIK, Windows System Image Manager). Then click File, Select Windows Image and locate a copy of install.wim in the File Open dialog box. (The file must be on the local hard disk, not on the install DVD.) Image Manager will prompt you to select an image. Typically, the image will include all the standard Vista product edition types.

After selecting the image type (I'll use Vista Ultimate as an example), click OK, and Image Manager will mount the image file and create an associated .clg file. When the process is complete, you'll see that the Windows Image pane in Image Manager now contains the Vista Ultimate image, from which you can select components and packages. Select New Answer

File from the File menu, and the Answer File pane will contain new Components and Packages sections, as Figure 1 shows.

Components are internal Vista features (e.g., Remote Assistance, Windows Sidebar) that you can apply during Windows Setup. In Image Manager, you can specify the configuration pass—or phase of Windows installation—in which particular components are installed. Packages are external applications and features (e.g., service packs, hotfixes, language packs, drivers) that you can add to an install image. You can also enable and disable Windows features via packages.

It might at first appear that there's some overlap between components and packages, since you can use packages to enable and disable Windows features. But think of it this way: Components are internal to Windows, and packages are external. IT administrators or PC makers typically use packages to disable or enable certain Windows features, overriding the Microsoft-specified default behavior.

You'll see seven entries under Components in the Answer File pane: windowsPE, offline-Servicing, generalize, specialize, auditSystem, auditUser, and oobeSystem. By default, there aren't any specified packages because this is a bare-bones install image.

You can expand the Components and Packages nodes in the Windows Image pane to see which components and packages are available for editing. You should see many components and a short list of packages. As you select items from the list, they populate the Properties pane so that you can edit properties.

For example, let's edit the default home page in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) so that it's a custom location. To do so, expand Components and locate the x86_Microsoft-WindowsInternetExplorer-6.0.xxxx.xxxxx_neutral node, where xxxx.xxxxx is the version number of the OS you're installing. Expand the Components node, then the StartPages subnode. To change the home page setting, right-click the StartPage subnode (under StartPages) and select Add Setting to Pass 4 specialize, as you can see in Figure 1. (It's the only option available.) A collapsible set of component changes is added to 4 specialize in the Answer File pane.

When you select StartPage in the Answer File pane, various StartPage properties appear in the Properties pane, including the StartPageUrl field under Settings. To add a custom URL, type it in that field and press Enter. After the new setting is accepted, the text will be bolded.

The sheer number of components you can configure can be overwhelming. Let's look at a few common components and their locations in the Components hierarchy.

To automatically specify a username, right-click the Components, x86_Microsoft-Windows-Setup_6.0.xxxx.xxxxx_neutral, UserData setting and select Add Setting to pass 1 WindowsPE of Vista Setup. This component is used to specify the username and organization and determine whether the End User License Agreement is automatically accepted. To automatically add a product key, add the Components, x86_Microsoft-Windows-Setup_6.0.xxxx.xxxxx_neutral, UserData, ProductKey setting to the first phase of Vista Setup. Be sure to change the WillShowUI key to Never and specify the product key.

To configure packages, expand the Packages node under your install image in the Windows Image pane. By default, you should see packages such as FeaturePack, Foundation, LanguagePack, and Product, as Figure 2 shows. FeaturePacks are out-of-band additions, and Vista includes two by default: .NET Framework 3.0 and XML Paper Specification (the Microsoft format that competes with PDF). Foundation is the base OS (aka MinWin) component on which all Vista installs are built. Under LanguagePack, you should see at least two nodes (one for Windows and one for the .NET Framework)—more, if you're using a multilanguage version of Vista or are manually adding languages. Under Product, you'll see the component Microsoft added to MinWin to build the Vista product edition you're working with (in this case, the Vista Ultimate package).

Some packages offer interesting customization features. For example, you can go into the Foundation package and enable and disable specific features, such as InboxGames (which lets you enable or disable individual games), Tablet PC optional features, and the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server. To customize a package, right-click it in the Windows Image pane and choose Add to Answer File. Then select the package in the Answer File pane and edit its settings in the Properties pane.

To add a new package to your customized install, select Insert, Package(s). Then, navigate to the add-ons you'd like to install with Vista.

At any step along the way, you can click the Validate Answer File button in the Image Manager toolbar to ensure that the resulting answer file will work. If Image Manager finds any errors, it tells you where to find the problem.

You can save a validated answer file to a disk. From Image Manager's File menu, select Save Answer File and save the file to disk under a name such as autounattend.xml. If you double-click the file in Windows Explorer, it will open in IE or your default XML editor. You can open and edit an answer file either through Image Manager or through the Windows shell by selecting Open With.

To install Vista on only a few PCs, the simplest solution might be to create a bootable DVD by copying a Vista install DVD and adding an answer file to the root. Then, you can use the customized installation DVD to boot each PC. Vista should set up in about 30 minutes.

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