Microsoft® Windows® Desktop Deployment Resource Kit

Templating Answer Files

You’ve created the perfect answer file. You’ve verified all of the settings in the lab. Now you’re ready to start thinking about building distribution points with it and installing Windows XP Professional on a few thousand computers. Will your answer file work for the different users and computers in the organization without requiring user input? It probably won’t work well unless you find a way to customize the answer file for different computers and users.

The problem settings tend to be FullName and ComputerName. The setting ComputerName must be unique from computer to computer. You might have additional settings that must be unique per computer, too. For example, you might want to set OrgName to the user’s department ...