[ggarman]

Either the unattend.xml file is extremely hoaky or I've really got something screwed up. I'm new to automated imaging with Windows 7, our previous image was XP which was created by another guy. So, I am looking for some of the basics to see if there is something I've missed.

We use a linux pre-boot environment, call rdeploy to drop the IMG file onto the drive, done this part hundreds of times with our XP image. This all seems to work just fine. My process is I build the unattend.xml with the SIM, build an image in audit mode, put the unattend.xml in the sysprep folder and run sysprep. Then suck the image off the drive with rdeploy then deploy it to a test machine.

During Winpe/setup it is ignoring my disk configuration settings in the unattend.xml and ends up just formatting the entire drive as one big 250GB partition instead of what I told it to do, I can't get it to just create a 20GB partition and leave the rest unallocated. It acts on several other settings in the xml so I know it is reading it. Here's one of my test XMLs, please take a look and let me know if there is anything screwed up with it. Also, if there are any pre-requisites that I should be doing, please let me know.

Thanks!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
<servicing></servicing>
<settings pass="windowsPE">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SetupUILanguage>
<UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
<WillShowUI>Never</WillShowUI>
</SetupUILanguage>
<InputLocale>0409:00000409</InputLocale>
<SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
<UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
<UILanguageFallback>en-US</UILanguageFallback>
<UserLocale>en-US</UserLocale>
</component>
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<DiskConfiguration>
<WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI>
<Disk>
<DiskID>0</DiskID>
<WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk>
<CreatePartitions>
<CreatePartition>
<!-- Create primary partition, 20 GB -->
<Order>1</Order>
<Type>Primary</Type>
<Size>20000</Size>
</CreatePartition>
<!-- Create extended partition and fill the rest of the hard disk -->
<CreatePartition>
<Order>2</Order>
<Type>Extended</Type>
<Extend>true</Extend>
</CreatePartition>
<!-- Create logical partition within the extended partition, 6 GB -->
<CreatePartition>
<Order>3</Order>
<Type>Logical</Type>
<Size>6000</Size>
</CreatePartition>
</CreatePartitions>
</Disk>
</DiskConfiguration>
<UserData>
<AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
</UserData>
<ImageInstall>
<OSImage>
<InstallFrom>
<MetaData wcm:action="add">
<Key>/IMAGE/INDEX</Key>
<Value>3</Value>
</MetaData>
</InstallFrom>
<InstallTo>
<DiskID>0</DiskID>
<PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
</InstallTo>
<WillShowUI>Never</WillShowUI>
</OSImage>
</ImageInstall>
<EnableNetwork>false</EnableNetwork>
<EnableFirewall>true</EnableFirewall>
<LogPath>c:\</LogPath>
</component>
....

[johnhc]

ggarman, I am no expert here but I use xml to create partitions and install W7 on VM for testing. I did not see any modify commands (<ModifyPartitions> and <ModifyPartition>) to format, define file systems and assign drive letters and labels. I do all of these and it works fine. Also, I suggest you run Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) against your xml if you have not done so. Enjoy, John.