[Agent007]

Hello everybody,

I've read the msfn guide and it says

Quote

If you prefer to manually choose a partition during text-mode setup with full control on choice of file system, then make sure you have these lines set as they are under the [Data]and [Unattended] sections in winnt.sif:
[Data]
AutoPartition=0
[Unattended]
FileSystem=*
If you want to automate this process with exact specifics on drive letters, partition sizes and file systems, you may want to consider using Bart's PE and diskpart.

My situation is that I have 50 PCs with identical hardware and I want to format them monthly using C: (windows) and D: (empty ntfs) [note: drive C: already contains a windows xp installation and I want to format it and clean install]

I understand that diskpart command would require me to boot into windows and Bart PE would require me to boot with the cd on every computer. I don't want to do that, I want the installation to auto-format all my partitions
I used:
[Data]
AutoPartition=0
[Unattended]
FileSystem=*
Repartition=Yes

but no use, setup still says C: drive has already windows installation, and prompt me to delete it.

Is there a way to do this ?????

[supadodger]

i wanna know too.

i always want c:\ formatted and installed

[Agent007]

I don't think there is a way to do this. I just posted it to make sure.

Funny thing that attend setup asks you for partitions sizes and unattended setup doesn't give you that option.

[gkilla]

yo everyone,

i'm having that same problem with the paritioning at an unattended setup. haven't tried it yet, but i'm looking at the command autopartition=0. is 0 the only value you can enter or not? do we need to enter the value 1? because if this value doesn't work then autopartition=0 means disable. so i'm going with these lines and check:

[Data]
AutoPartition=1
[Unattended]
FileSystem=NTFS
Repartition=Yes

This part has to work, even if these values of mine aren't right. come on man, why do they call it unattended setup.

oh yes, can someone help me with the $EOM$ Distribution Folder? Then i mean where do i make the folders or something, not clear to me yet and tested it with making a user, but nor working.

ok terla people

[FaceMouth]

Quote

My situation is that I have 50 PCs with identical hardware and I want to format them monthly using C: (windows) and D: (empty ntfs) [note: drive C: already contains a windows xp installation and I want to format it and clean install]I understand that diskpart command would require me to boot into windows and Bart PE would require me to boot with the cd on every computer. I don't want to do that, I want the installation to auto-format all my partitions
I used:
[Data]
AutoPartition=0
[Unattended]
FileSystem=*
Repartition=Yes

but no use, setup still says C: drive has already windows installation, and prompt me to delete it.

Is there a way to do this ?????

Quote

[Data]AutoPartition=0
[Unattended]
Repartition=Yes

The repartition answer works for me. I'm very new at this, found this site about two weeks ago. My best advice for $OEM$ files is just keep searching and reading. The answers are almost always somewhere in this forum, if not google works great.

Also, try nlite if you haven't used it yet. I haven't tried it, I like doing everything myself, but it seems to be a very good program requiring minimal knowledge on teh part of the user.

Finally, I hope I helped a bit and if I seem to be arrogan in any way it is unintentional.

[orion2]

Guys if you search the forum you'll find the answer, however it might take a while to find your anwer, but it's worth it......

If you copy the below text in to your winnt.sif you'll find that your drive gets paritioned and formatted automatically with no user unput.

Thanks to another user and much searching I found this out last week. Tested and Works a treat.

Quote

;SetupMgrTag
[Data]  AutoPartition=1
  MsDosInitiated="0"
  UnattendedInstall="Yes"
  UseBIOSToBoot = 0
  AutomaticUpdates = yes

[Unattended]
  UnattendMode=FullUnattended
  OemSkipEula=Yes
  OemPreinstall= yes
  TargetPath=\WINDOWS
  Repartition = yes
  UnattendSwitch = yes
  WaitForReboot = No
  NoWaitAfterTextMode = 1
  NoWaitAfterGUIMode = 1
  DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
  NonDriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
  Hibernation = No
  AutoActivate = No

[DiskConfig]
  Disk1="Disk1.config"
[Disk1.config]
  Size1="*"
  PartitionType1="primary"
  FileSystem1="ntfs"
  Quickformat1="yes

"

[Agent007]

orion2, many people on this forum say the answer is Disk.Config, it doesn't work for me though.

I have Windows XP SP2, and Disk.Config is not documented anywhere in ref.chm or deploy.chm.

furthermore, I put the following winnt.sif into an iso image and test it on a test machine, I want to make C: 3 GB, other drives I will quick format them using batch scripts (but the result of this winnt.sif is a C: partition taking full space):

Quote

[Data]  AutoPartition=1
  MsDosInitiated="0"
  UnattendedInstall="Yes"
  UseBIOSToBoot = 0
  AutomaticUpdates = yes

[Unattended]
  UnattendMode=FullUnattended
  OemSkipEula=Yes
  OemPreinstall= yes
  TargetPath=\WINDOWS
  Repartition = yes
  UnattendSwitch = yes
  WaitForReboot = No
  NoWaitAfterTextMode = 1
  NoWaitAfterGUIMode = 1
  DriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
  NonDriverSigningPolicy = Ignore
  Hibernation = No
  AutoActivate = No

[Disk.Config]
  Disk1="Disk1.config"
[Disk1.config]
  Size1="3000"
  PartitionType1="primary"
  FileSystem1="ntfs"
  Quickformat1="yes[Data]"

[GuiUnattended]
OEMSkipRegional=1
OemSkipWelcome=1
AdminPassword=*
TimeZone=150
AutoLogon=Yes
AutoLogonCount=1

[Display]
BitsPerPel=32
Xresolution=800
Yresolution=600

[UserData]
Fullname="TEST"
Orgname="TESTLAB"
ComputerName=TEST
ProductKey=XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

[Identification]
JoinWorkgroup=TESTLAB

[Networking]
InstallDefaultComponents=Yes

[RegionalSettings]
Language=00003c01
LanguageGroup=13

[GuiRunOnce]
"%windir%\system32\RunOnceEx.cmd"

Please help.

edit: you specified [DiskConfig], I think you meant [Disk.Config] ? anyway both of them doesn't work for me.

This post has been edited by Agent007: 18 September 2005 - 10:49 AM

[bonedaddy]

@ orion2

are you changing the size of your hdd via partitions or is it just formatting the

whole hdd???? because if it's just formatting the whole hdd then you can delete

this from your winnt.sif;

Quote

[DiskConfig]  Disk1="Disk1.config"
[Disk1.config]
  Size1="*"
  PartitionType1="primary"
  FileSystem1="ntfs"
  Quickformat1="yes

because Size1="*" would just be the whole hdd.......... at least I think that
is the way it works??

I can't get it to work and I used the same as yours except I added a size

Quote

[DiskConfig]  Disk1="Disk1.config"
[Disk1.config]
  Size1="20000"
  PartitionType1="primary"
  FileSystem1="ntfs"
  Quickformat1="yes

any other ideas are welcome........

BD

EDIT
@Agent007
[DiskConfig] is correct found in ref.chm\winfom.ini\diskconfig were you can
find this as well

Quote

Setup ignores all entries in this section unless you run factory -winpe

This post has been edited by bonedaddy: 18 September 2005 - 12:41 PM

[orion2]

@ bonnedaddy

I'm just partitioning and formating the whole drive as one big partition.

I haven't messed with actually splitting the drive up in to seperat partitions yet, but it's somethinig that I'm intending on testing.

I don't know what would happen if I was to omit the Size1="*" part from the winnt.sif file but again it's something that I could test.

[Agent007]

I tested it, and it doesn't take the size neither the label of the drive, it just formats everything as one drive (just like Repartition=Yes do)

[orion2]

@ bonedaddy

this is part of my setup

Quote

;SetupMgrTag
[Data]    MsDosInitiated = "No"
    AutoPartition=1
    UnattendedInstall="Yes"

[Unattended]
    NonDriverSigningPolicy = "Ignore"
    DriverSigningPolicy = "Ignore"
    OemPreinstall = "Yes"
    UnattendMode=FullUnattended
    OemSkipEula=Yes
    TargetPath=\WINDOWS
    FileSystem=*
    UnattendSwitch="yes"
    Repartition=Yes
    WaitForReboot = No
    NoWaitAfterTextMode = 1
    NoWaitAfterGUIMode = 1
    KeyboardLayout="United Kingdom"

[DiskConfig]
    Disk1="Disk1.config"
[Disk1.config]
    Size1="*"
    PartitionType1="primary"
    FileSystem1="ntfs"
    Quickformat1="yes"

[Rob325]

fyi - I've tried for the last couple of days to get this to work on win2k but it doesn't want to play, Guess it's not supported??

[DanielM]

Agent007, on Sep 19 2005, 08:24 AM, said:

I tested it, and it doesn't take the size neither the label of the drive, it just formats everything as one drive (just like Repartition=Yes do)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Don't know if you solved this problem by now, but I just noticed that you have a dot too much. It should be [DiskConfig], not [Disk.Config]. Could this be the reason why you're having trouble?

/Daniel - new to this stuff

[JPamplin]

Guys,

I would completely ignore the subtleties of trying to do this with a SIF file and just boot into DOS and run a batch file to reformat your drives. If you just have a C: drive, then checking for the existence of a D: will always be false, so use AEFDisk or other free DOS utility to programmatically reformat the drive as a C: and D: and reboot.

If D: DOES exist, then the check is TRUE and you can launch your install script. I have outlined all the code you need to accomplish this in a previous post:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=31871&hl=

You may want to play with my routine a little bit - here's how: change the check routine to copy a little text file to the D: drive, then check for the existence of that file. If the D: drive exists, then the file will copy without error, but if D: does NOT exist, then the file won't be there.

That might be a better way to check for the existence of d:. I haven't played with it lately so I don't know, but I can try to create a better check routine if people ask for it.

JP