Auto Installation and Configuration Help Needed.

Question

I would like to setup autoinstall to install on my first disk partition but only use 1 TB of the 4TB drive for Windows and the rest set as NTFS that I can mount on both Windows and Linux also (Linux is on the second disk).

My goal is to create a "Fresh Install USB" that will create both environments. I've already go the Debian portion down, I just need to get the Windows right. I used https://www.windowsafg.com/win10x86_x64_uefi.html to create my autounintend.xml but it has different errors at different times. Most of the errors are partition based and I have never tried to automate the partitioning of the extra NTFS partition.

Should I partition the 4TB drive with the Debian install? I figured Windows would try to overwrite it anyway which is why I didn't try it yet.

Also, is it possible to do an autounattended install and add Microsoft accounts as users and choose which are administrators?

With Debian, I've configured it to create all the users in the house and install the different applications, specifically (main reason for all of this) Steam. I would love to have Windows autoconfigure the same way Debian is:

Installed

Users created

Hostname & Domain set

Joined to domain

Applications installed

Google Authentication configured as primary authentication

So far, with Windows, I can only get it installed [sometimes] and one local user created.

Answer 1

Hello there,

Yes, it is possible to perform an unattended (automated) installation of Windows and add Microsoft accounts as users, including specifying which accounts should be administrators. You can achieve this using an answer file during the installation process. An answer file is an XML file that contains configuration settings for the Windows Setup process.

Here's an example of how the user account section of the answer file might look:

<settings>

<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" processorArchitecture="amd64">

<UserAccounts>

<LocalAccounts>

<LocalAccount wcm:action="add">

<Password>MyPassword123</Password>

<Group>Administrators</Group>

<Name>AdminUser</Name>

<DisplayName>Administrator User</DisplayName>

</LocalAccount>

<LocalAccount wcm:action="add">

<Password>StandardPass456</Password>

<Group>Users</Group>

<Name>StandardUser</Name>

<DisplayName>Standard User</DisplayName>

</LocalAccount>

</LocalAccounts>

</UserAccounts>

</component>

</settings>

Hope this resolves your Query !!

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