Customizing and Automating Installations

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When you have created a distribution folder and an answer file, you can start customizing the installation by adding devices, drivers, applications, Help files, support information, and other components of your choice. Depending on what you want to customize, perform either or both of the following tasks:

  • Add entries in the answer file to provide specific instructions to be carried out by Setup during installation.

  • Populate the distribution folder by adding to it the files, programs, and applications of your choice. These can include mass storage devices, Plug and Play devices, and applications.

You can customize features and components in Windows 2000 Professional. The examples provided cover the following:

  • Adding hardware devices, including storage devices, Plug and Play devices, and hardware abstraction layers (HALs).

  • Setting passwords for local user accounts. You can also force all users or certain users to change their passwords when they log on after an upgrade from Windows 95 or Windows 98.

  • Setting options for language and multilingual support and key descriptions for other regional options such as language-specific keyboard layouts.

  • Setting time zones.

  • Specifying display settings to ensure that Setup automatically detects the display resolution on a portable computer.

  • Specifying file system settings to automatically convert FAT16/FAT 32 file systems to NTFS during installation.

  • Specifying BIOS settings to force Setup to use the computer's BIOS to start the computer.

  • Using the $$Rename.txt file to automatically convert short file names to long file names.

  • Adding applications during the GUI-mode phase of Setup (using Cmdlines.txt), when the user logs on for the first time (using [GuiRunOnce]), using batch files, and packaging applications to be used with the Windows Installer Service.

There are a many Windows 2000 Professional features that you can customize after installation, such as wallpaper, screen saver settings, Active Desktop, custom toolbars and taskbars, and new Start and Programs menus options. For more information about post-installation customization, see Introduction to Configuration and Management and Customizing the Desktop in this book.