Here's how to perform an unattended upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP

In plain speak, I will now provide instructions to those of you
wishing to upgrade multiple workstations running Win2k to WinXPPro,
with NO user intervention required:

Take your Windows XP CD and copy it's entire contents to a shared
installtion point on your network.

In the i386 Folder in this share, locate the file called
'unattend.txt' (or create it if it doesn't exist) and open it. Delete
the contents of this file and type the following:

[Unattended]
NTUpgrade=Yes

[UserData]
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

Save your file.

Now, the command line to perform the unattended UPGRADE (not a fresh
installation) is as follows:

\\SERVER NAME\SHARED FOLDER NAME\I386\WINNT32.EXE
/unattend:"unattend.txt"

the '\' symbol is a backslash. I don't know why it appears strange
here. 'SERVER NAME' is the name of your server where the source files
are located. 'SHARED FOLDER NAME' is the name of the shared folder
into which you previously copied your source files. et voila!

Remember that unless you have used a volume license product key, your
workstations will still want to go through the dreaded 'Product
Activation' after the upgrade.

Regards,

James Perry
j.perry@cms-computers.co.uk