Performing an Unattended Installation

You can perform an unattended installation of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000, in which setup screen entries are made automatically using stored information. An unattended installation can be convenient if you want to perform several installations of SQL Server with identical configurations on different computers. An unattended installation requires a setup initialization file, which can be created in several different ways.

By default, each time you install SQL Server using the Setup screens, the options you select are recorded into the setup initialization file, Setup.iss. Setup.iss is placed in the system root directory (%windir%), and is available to provide installation settings at a later time.

Note  You cannot perform an unattended installation to set up a failover cluster of Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

Creating a Setup File Using the Record Unattended Option

In Setup, when you select the Record Unattended .ISS file option in the Advanced Options screen, each subsequent choice you make in the setup screens is recorded in the Setup.iss file stored in the system root directory. SQL Server files are not installed in this process. The Setup.iss file can then be run as is, or revised in a text editor if necessary.

To record an unattended installation file