The information in this article applies to:
SUMMARYIn Microsoft Windows NT, you can automate the installation of a domain controller using unattended Setup, or while performing a normal, attended installation. In Windows 2000, domain controllers are created after setup, even if you are upgrading to Windows 2000. You can also use a script to run the domain controller promotion (Dcpromo.exe) process. It may be useful to combine Dcpromo.exe with unattended Setup to automate the installation of Windows 2000 and the creation of a domain controller. This article describes how to automate the installation of Windows 2000 and the creation of a domain controller. MORE INFORMATIONTo add this task to your unattended Setup file, use either of the following methods: Method 1Add the appropriate information to the unattended Setup file [DCInstall] and [GUIRunOnce] sections.Method 2Create a separate answer file for the Dcpromo process, using the unattended Setup file [GUIRunOnce] section to start the promotion process.The Dcpromo process can be scripted by using the dcpromo /answer:%path_to_answer_file% command. In the following example, the [DCInstall] section and parameters are added directly to the unattended answer file. To obtain the parameters for the [DCInstall] section, refer to the unattended Setup documentation. NOTE: Because this process occurs after setup, the answer file created is named $winnt$.inf and is copied to the \system32 folder. Because the parameters are in this file, you must add the following text to the [GUIRunOnce] section of the unattended Setup answer file:
The Dcpromo.exe tool cannot properly interpret system environmental variables such as %windir% and %systemroot%, so they can be used in case the install folder is different in other computers. If the parameters in the [DCInstall] section need to be unique, you can use Unique Database
Files (UDF) to change these parameters.Also, when the Dcpromo process completes, password information is removed from this section of the $winnt$.inf file. To make this process easier because the Run-once command does not execute until someone logs on to the computer, you can add the following text to the unattended answer file:
If you want to create a separate answer file for Dcpromo, the
[GUIRunOnce] section and autologon can still be used if you make
sure you can obtain access to the file after setup.
Additional query words: Unattended Setup
Keywords : kbnetwork kbsetup kbtool kbOPK kbSBK |
Last Reviewed: December 29, 1999 © 2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use. |