well i finally got it, i followed the steps in this guide and my unattended setup is working now
http://theitbros.com/sysprep-a-windo...tart-to-finish
the only thing i'm missing is auto-joining the domain, but apparently that's a real issue in Windows 7 sysprep that Microsoft hasn't fixed yet. so if that's the only thing i'll need to do manually i'm ok with that