945 chipset, XP install with integrated drivers won't boot

[idata]

Having trouble integrating the contents of the inf update utility into an 32-bit XP Pro automated install.

On the first boot after Windows installation has completed, Windows hangs during boot at the black screen with the Windows XP logo and the moving blue squares. The squares move from left to right about 7 times, then stop moving and Windows never comes up.

My machine is a Dell Optiplex GX 620 with a 3.6GHz P4 and 512MB RAM. The system has the 945 Express chipset with MEBx but MEBx is disabled so I don't have to load the AMT drivers.

The system has integrated Intel graphics but those are disabled due to the inclusion of a PCI Express ATI Radeon 2400 Pro. The drivers for this card are also integrated into XP setup.

The system has a Broadcom gigabit NIC. The drivers for this are also integrated into XP setup.

My install process is to boot the system into a PE environment using a flash drive, clean and prepare the single hard drive using diskpart, copy an i386 folder down from a network share, and run winnt32 against an unattend.txt file.

SP3 has been slipstreamed into the install (previous to attempting to add drivers).

The unattend.txt file contains these (and other) entries in the [Unattended] section:

DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore

OemPnPDriversPath = setup\chipset\intel_0;setup\nic\broadcom_0;setup\video\ati_0

OemPreinstall = Yes

In the i386 folder, I have this folder structure (in addition to all the Windows setup files and folders that are usually present in i386):

\$OEM$\$1\setup\chipset\intel_0

\$OEM$\$1\setup\nic\broadcom_0

\$OEM$\$1\setup\video\ati_0

\$OEM$\$$\inf

I downloaded infinst_autol.zip, version 9.2.0.1021, dated 1/4/2011, from a page at intel.com that said it's 'Primarily for Intel 6, 5, 4, 3, 900 Series Chipsets.'

I extracted the contents. The readme file says to copy the XP inf files from the All folder into folder structures as listed above. I can't tell which of the inf files are for XP, the random sampling that I have opened have all said that they're for XP as well as other OSes, so I've copied them all.

If I remove 'setup\chipset\intel_0;' from the OemPnPDriversPath entry the install completes successfully, but of course the chipset drivers are not loaded.

If I remove one or both of ';setup\nic\broadcom_0;setup\video\ati_0' from OemPnPDriversPath, the install fails as described above.

If I get an older chipset install package from Dell and use it to create the unattended install, the install works, but the info is at least 2 years older than what's in the 9.2.0.1021 package.

After a failed install, I can boot into safe mode and Device Manager reports all devices installed correctly, no unknown devices, things like the hard drive controllers correctly identified as Intel components instead of generic components, but the event log contains no information about the failed boots, just the current boot into safe mode.

Any suggestions?

Brent Gardner