[tobyw]

We have a number of HP DL360's and DL380's and are setting up a Windows 2003 build via Windows PE. Within Windows PE we have created the array, rebooted and run diskpart to create the parition/set to active. We then format this and run the Winnt32 setup.

After following the wizard the files are copied to the machine and the wizard closes (Winpe prevents the reboot). We then reboot the servers and it starts to boot from C: and then nothing happens, just a blank screen.

We have tried rebooting after using Diskpart and formatting the drive and this makes no difference.

We have found that if we use Gdisk to create a partition in DOS (Fat32) reboot, format the drive and then boot into Win PE, Windows 2003 installs okay and on the reboot continues the installation.

We have tried using Gdisk32 within PE but this has the same issue after the reboot.

Does anyone have any advice/experience of this issue ?

Thanks

Toby

[p4ntb0y]

I see you are using HP kit do you have the SSSTK 32 ?

this works ok but needs the reboot for diskpart to read the disks properly.

I bet if you were to read the MBR and write that info to a temp drive you wont need to reboot.

There was another post on this and the chap wrote the MBR to the Ramdrive and thus avoiding the reboot.

Take it you are talking about G4's?

[NMidlane]

Thanks for the reply. (I'm a colleague of Toby's). Yes we are using the sstk but also other utilities.

We've managed to get this working by using diskpart to create the drive, then format it and then using gdisk32 (partition utility comes with ghost) to reinitialise the master boot record (gdisk32 1 /mbr). We then run an unattended windows installation and the server reboots to continue the installation correctly rather than hanging at "booting to C drive". Just going to see if I can some how get rid of the need to reboot between creating the array with cpqacu.exe and doing the disk partitioning part.

Thanks

Neil

[p4ntb0y]

keep me posted on your progress

[jungle_warrior]

this could be a MBR problem, boot code is missing, so there's a blank screen.

in DOS environment, there are lots of tools to fix the MBR, but the diskpart tool in WinPE..........seems to have no support.

Try format drive C during windows installation.

[fraefel]

Hi,

have a look at http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=30378

\Thomas

[wrecklesswun]

try the bootsect utility in the waik...should be a fix all.