Windows 10: Windows 11 clean installation from generic usb - Domain and business name predefined and...

Hi,recently I bought two second hand notebooks from a bulk sale. Yesterday I tried to do a clean install of Windows 11 on both notebooks from a generic usb stick that I have previously used many times without any problems. Unfortunately, even after swapping the out of the box SSD of the notebooks with one of my SSDs, everytime I try to setup Windows 11 after the successful installation, a business name and the associated domain are already predefined with no way for me to change these two settings. So far I have tried:- Swapping out the SSD- Doing a BIOS upgrade- Deleting all data from every i

:)

 

Installing windows off of a USB stick

Step By Step from vista:
From admin cmd prompt

1. diskpart
1a. list disk
2. select disk 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (d being your vista cd and e being your usb stick)

And that's it, boot off your usb disk

 

UnattendedJoin error: failed to find the domain data (0x6e)

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't want to add a domain account, as this is a generic unattended install that will be used for all company machines. Do you think it's possible that the computer would join the domain if, instead of using UnattendedJoin in specialize, I used your steps but left out the specific account?

The other thing I was thinking was to use a generic account to allow the domain join during the specialize step. I added a machine password in the UnattendedJoin component, and instead of getting the error listed above, I got an authentication error, which makes me think I could probably do a secure join instead of the unsecure join.

Thoughts?

 

Clean Install Workaround for Vista

You may remember this news story on techPowerUp! a couple of days ago relating to the lack of clean installs when using the Upgrade Editions of Vista, which required an old OS to be installed. However, Paul Thurrott has managed to find a workaround for this issue, which ironically lets users do a clean install Vista without any previous version of Windows, albeit a little tedious. Here are the steps:

• Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD as normal
• When prompted for a product code, leave this blank
• Select the version of Vista you have purchased and let Vista install
• When you boot to your desktop for the first time, run the Vista setup from Windows
• This time enter your product key
• When asked whether you want to do an Upgrade of Custom install, select custom and choose a clean install
• Windows will now install for a second time and you should be able to activate it

Remember, these steps are only advised for use in order to achieve a clean install of Vista, it is only legal to use the upgrade editions if you have previously purchased the appropriate version of Windows.

Source: DailyTech