Format Hard Drive

[ANON837]

I am really trying to make Vista installs unattended. I've used Nlite and was pleasantly surprised. I simply got fed up with with MS tools (BDD and WSIM). Too complex for simple imaging and deployment. My question is is there a way to automate the Vista install that would include formating and partitioning the hard drive? I would trully like to pop the DVD in the drive and walk away. I've unattended everything else except that. Did I miss a step or is this even possible?

[JoCajoler]

Erm I believe it is.

I thought WSIM was OK actually but YMMV.

Check this post Unattended tutorial WSIM

I found it quite useful.

I tried this with XP a long time ago, and it would always stick on timezone?? I think unattend was broken to some degree in XP.

Hopefully there are no sticking points with Vista.

Good luck

[nuhi]

ANON837, do a vLite config then edit autounattend.xml file and add what you want. For documentation search on microsoft.com, it will be just a few lines to add formatting. I don't add it because it's too dangerous and I know I would use it and messup my partitions while testing.

[ANON837]

Thanks for the advice. I was hoping to avoid the WSIM and XML all together. It's a giant headache when my images are failing to install. I wish Microsoft would take a page from Nlite and Vlite and simplify things. Not dumb it down, but not weigh it down with extras to make it look like a high powered program.

[nuhi]

There are plenty of guides on MSFN to be able to simply add few lines into that XML with Notepad and be done with it.