HOWTO: Controlling Which Accessories Are Installed in Unattended Setup

ID: Q156813

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0
Microsoft Windows NT Server version 4.0

SUMMARY

By default, unattended setup does not provide a way to control what accessory applications are installed in the Accessories program group.

MORE INFORMATION

To control which accessory applications are installed in the Accessories program group, you must modify the application's information (.inf) file.

WARNING: Microsoft does not encourage or support changes to .inf files; therefore, Microsoft Technical Support does not support the procedure in this article. Although we have tested the following procedure and it appears to function as described, make a backup copy of your .inf file before you proceed.

Each application or group of applications on the Accessories menu has an associated information (.inf) file. Each .inf file uses the InstallType variable to determine whether or not the application is to be installed. The InstallType variable has three possible values:


    0 = Manual only
   10 = Typical or Custom
   14 = Typical, Custom, or Portable

The following .inf files use the InstallType variable. You can find the list of .inf files in the [BaseWinOptionsInfs] section of the Syssetup.inf file.


   accessor.inf
   communic.inf
   games.inf
   imagevue.inf
   mmopt.inf
   multimed.inf
   optional.inf
   pinball.inf
   wordpad.inf

The following example is the section for FreeCell from the Games.inf file for Windows NT Server 4.0. By default, games are not installed on the server. Because unattended setup uses Typical as the installation type, you can specify a value of 10 can be used for FreeCell's InstallType. By default, the InstallType for Free Cell is 0.


   [Freecell]
   OptionDesc              = %Freecell_DESC%
   Tip                     = %Freecell_TIP%
   IconIndex               = 62 ;Windows mini-icon for dialogs
   Parent                  = Games
   ;
   ; The following value is the one to change.
   ; To install FreeCell, change InstallType from 0 to 10.
   ;
   InstallType             = 0 ;Manual only
   CopyFiles               = FreecellCopyFilesSys, FreecellCopyFilesHelp
   AddReg                  = FreecellAddReg
   UpdateInis              = FreecellInis
   Uninstall               = FreecellUninstall
   Upgrade                 = FreecellUpgrade
   Detect                  = %11%\freecell.exe

To take advantage of the InstallType variable for manual or unattended installations of Windows NT, a certain amount of preparation is needed.

Copy the contents of the I386 directory from the Windows NT 4.0 compact disc to a distribution share.

For each .inf file that you need to modify, first expand the original .inf file and rename the compressed .in_ file, using the following commands:

EXPAND GAMES.IN_ GAMES.INF
RENAME GAMES.IN_ GAMES.SAV

NOTE: You need to use the Windows NT version of Expand.exe.

Edit the .inf file and change the InstallType value, as outlined above.


       0 = Manual only
      10 = Typical or Custom
      14 = Typical, Custom, or Portable

Additional query words: prodnt Unattended Setup Install

Keywords : kbsetup kbOPK ntsetup ntdriver ntreskit kbSBK
Version : winnt:4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbhowto