Prompted for User Name and Password in Unattended Installation

ID: Q224284

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

SYMPTOMS

When you run an unattended installation of Windows 2000, you may be prompted to provide a user name and password to join a domain, and this may occur even if the machine account is already created.

CAUSE

This behavior can occur because Windows 2000 uses Kerberos authentication, and this requires a valid domain account to join the domain.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, automate this portion of an unattended installation by adding the following section to your unattended answer file:

[Identification]

DomainAdmin=%Account_name%
DomainAdminPassword=%password%
CreateComputerAccountInDomain = No

NOTE: The account you provide does not have to be an administrator account but must be a valid account in the domain. For example, you may want to create a account that has permissions to add workstations to the domain. This is the account that may be used for unattended installations and cases where the machine account needs to be created. Because the unattended answer file is copied to the %systemroot%\system32 folder of the computer being installed as $winnt$.inf, you may be concerned that the password may be compromised. This has been addressed so that when Setup finishes, the password field is removed from this file, and this is also done for the local administrator password, and any other password field in the [DCinstall] section.

Additional query words: 2000

Keywords : kbenv kbsetup kbui
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb