'Configure advanced Windows options prior to install' tweak!
GHoosdum
Icrontian
Take advantage of the deployment tools on the Windows CD to configure your system prior to installing including setting options that are a royal pita to change after install.
To begin, insert your Windows 2000 or Windows XP CD on a machine already running Windows and select "Explore this CD" from the autorun menu. Navigate to the Support\Tools directory and copy deploy.cab to your desktop. Extract all the files and launch setupmgr.exe and run through the wizard for an Unattended install where the install directories are on the CD.
The wizard will walk you through creating a basic answer file (unattend.txt) and a template that will activate it based on your machine configuration (unattend.bat). After you finish the setup wizard, open up the manual (ref.chm) and read about all the settings you can configure like disabling visible entry points for IE, Outlook, not installing MSN Explorer, placing your home directories on another partition, etc and edit your answer file in Notepad with any other options you want not covered by the wizard. Just remember that all drive letters you specify will be as they appear to the installer, so your RAID array may or may not be C to the Windows installer.
Advanced users can also specify OEM configuration files and driver locations. Super-advanced users will also have their security policy built in, as well as caches of all the Windows Updates.
When you're done, rename unattend.txt and unattend.bat to winnt.sif and winnt.bat respectively and copy them to a floppy disk. When you're ready to install, make sure the drive is already partitioned the way you want it and boot from the CD. Put in the disk as soon as the BIOS starts booting the CD.
There's a great article about this over at Hytek Computer.
The other main advantage to this method of installing Windows is that it doesn't ask you for input. In other words, You can go get some food and watch a movie without having to worry about the install process waiting for me to give it some mundane detail. It's also good if you set up a lot of machines in an almost identical configuration.
-drasnor
That's cool, dras... but can it be done without a floppy drive?
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Actually, yes. You need to copy the i386 folder to your hard drive, then create a boot CD with those files on it and the i386 folder. The winnt.bat file also needs to set the path to the i386 folder correctly.
You can also have SetupMgr.exe create your answer file so that it pulls the needed install files off of a network share. It's all documented.
-drasnor