WDS Unattended File (Language and WDS Authentication)

Question

I want to be able to automate the initial language selection and WDS auth credentials. I am guessing I can't set that in an answer file to be provided by WDS? How can I achieve this?

Since you already have the windows-7 tag, it's not useful to write "[WIn7]" in the question title. — gparent, Jan 09 '13 at 14:52

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 09 '13 at 01:46

4

In WDS there are two unattend files. One for the install image and one for the boot image. You set the settings that you're asking about in the WinPE section of the answer file for the boot image.

answered Jan 09 '13 at 01:46

MDMarra

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Doesn't really address my question. I have those settings in the answer file for the boot image, but the language selection and the wds auth dont work. The drive partitioning and install image selection all work fine. – Ablue Jan 09 '13 at 03:05
How does it not answer your question given the details provided? – MDMarra Jan 09 '13 at 04:11
My Mistake. You are saying that those settings are able to be set the normal way. Thanks. – Ablue Jan 09 '13 at 05:31

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 29 '18 at 21:29

I had this problem, strangely there are 2 places in the answer files where it is possible to set the language, one for the initial install and one for the OOBE. For the initial install I always use US (as anything else doesn't seem to work), then for the OOBE set your own country/language:

PE.xml:

<component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" processorArchitecture="amd64">
  <SetupUILanguage>
    <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
  </SetupUILanguage>
</component>

OOBE.xml:

 <settings pass="oobeSystem">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <InputLocale>en-gb</InputLocale>
            <SystemLocale>en-gb</SystemLocale>
            <UILanguage>en-gb</UILanguage>
            <UserLocale>en-gb</UserLocale>
        </component>

Hope that helps

Jim

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '21 at 18:23

When deploying an image with WDS, even though you have specified language and keyboard settings in your answer file, during setup you are still asked for these options. The reason it's doing this is because the next thing you do is authenticate to the WDS server. If there was a problem with the language, you might not be able to type your username and/or password.

To stop it asking for language settings (and to successfully log in), set the answer file to auto authenticate to WDS. You do this by adding the Windows Deployment Services sub component from the Microsoft-Windows-Setup_neutral component. Add it to the 1 windowsPE pass and fill in the credentials as so:

Domain:  <NETBios domain name>
Password: <clear text password>
Username:  <username with out any domain qualifiers>

Example:

Domain:  MyDomain
Password:  S00per3ecu&eP@ssw0rd
Username:  MyUserName

Bad Example:

Domain:  MyDomain.com
Password:  S00per3ecu&eP@ssw0rd
Username:  Mydomain\MyUserName

WDS Unattended File (Language and WDS Authentication)

3 Answers3