Intermittent Welcome to Windows on Windows XP Prof Setup

[m2d2]

Hi everybody. First post on Edugeek.

Can anyone shed some light on a spot of weirdness:

Sometimes when I clean install Windows XP it reboots to the XP Home logon screen when finished. Other times it goes through the whole Welcome to Windows wizard like you get on a syspreped OEM factory build.

I wondered whether it was manufactureer specific but it seems to happen on both Dell and Acer machines.Now this is not a problem per se. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't seeing things.

Is there a way to force Windows to boot to the logon screen asking for the administrator password rather than having to set up a seperate admin account?

[FN-GM]

Are you using the manufacturers restore Discs?

[m2d2]

Nope. I am using proper Microsoft windows install disks.

[FN-GM]

The only way i can think of that will not display the setup wizard will be if you add the machine to a domain during the install, but you are using XP Home.

[User3204]

I don't use XP Home, but I have noticed that with XP Pro after a sysprep it offers different options dependent upon whether it finds a network interface or not (we have some machines that have unsigned network card drivers).

Or, rather, what I notice is that if it can't find the network card drivers, it won't let me join it in, and then it makes me create a local user account, etc.

The obvious thing I can do to sort this, is probably create a local user prior to syspreping - haven't tried it yet...

[FN-GM]

you don't use Windows XP Home although you put

XP Home logon screen

That confussed me

[Richie1972]

I think the OP meant the "Welcome" logon screen.
This is something I have seen a few times when using RIS/WDS to re-image a PC. It seems that, for no apparent reason, the computer fails to join the domain - all I then do is just start the RIS off again from scrath and next time it works.
There seems to be no pattern to it, so I guess that something simply times out during the attempt to join the domain part of the process - if there was some way of lengthening this time period, maybe the problem would be solved

[alonebfg]

can i just say i think this depends if windows detects a network card during the install if not it wont give you the network options ie do you wish to join domain also if you are doing an uniatended install they need to be set up per type of machine as i found out the dont work the same on all machines. i hope this helps.

[Richie1972]

It's not down to the network card detection - it works most of the time on the same computer, hence why I think it might just be something in the join network part of the install timing out.

[alonebfg]

i would check cables from pc to plug i know we had a lose conection that done this. if it was the perment ones unless you got rat/mice its between sockets and link to pc.

[Richie1972]

Nope, not a cable issue - if I restart the RIS install from the beginning it usually works - that's why I think it is something timing out

[ChrisH]

I have had that issue and it was network related. I happened when I was trying to ris 30 PCs but was fine with smaller batches. Everything has been fine since we had fiber and upgraded our switches though.

[Richie1972]

Yeah I think that's our problem - we have fibre, but most of it is not in use yet as the school hasn't forked out for the new switches to use it.
Doing a few PCs aty once works - occasionally a room of 25 works, but more often than not at least one fails and has to be restarted