WinPE Creating Pagefile

[Geert_VDM]

Hello,

I have following problem: I'm doing an unattended installation of a new type HP portable. I've been using the same tool for over 10 different hardware types. And now it's no longer working.

This is what happens:

WinPe is booting: "Starting 'Facory -WinPe'...". At boot there are always 3 things happening being: "Setting Display Resolution", "Starting Networking" & "Finishing WinPE". Now with this machine it also creates a Pagefile. This is a problem because the next step in this installation is to clean the disk with diskpart and create 2 new (empty) partitions.

So my questions are:

* Why is he creating this Pagefile?

* How can i disable this creation?

* Can i clean the disk with the pagefile anyway?

The system is: HP - Compaq nc6400 - 60GB - 512MB - ...

Geert

[Br4tt3]

Hi!

Cant say I have seen this earlier... what media are u booting from into WinPE? Are u running WinPE from HDD/PXE/USB/CD/DVD?

If u run the diskpart script (I assume u r using this to partition and format the drive) will it throw up an error or something that's related to a file lock on the drive or anything?

[Geert_VDM]

I'm booting from a CD.

The diskpart script is like this:

select disk 0

clean

and than I get following error: "The selected disk is neccessary to the operation of your computer, and may not be cleaned"

Some more information:

The portable has a pre-installed image on it. There are 2 volumes on it, one volume NTFS (47 GB), One FAT32 (9GB) I found half a solution. If i delete the second volume (FAT32) and then reboot the machine, he's no longer creating a pagefile, then I can clean the disk.

The problem with this is that i have to reboot the machine in the middle. Unless I can force the second reboot from cd (without the machine asking to press any key), it's no solution.

Geert

[JuMz]

Does this computer happen to have less than 64MB of ram?

[Geert_VDM]

The system is: HP - Compaq nc6400 - 60GB - 512MB - ...

[gadget]

Which version of PE you using, thought the latter versions didnt create a ramdisk. 1.6 here wipes the hard drive on those systems with no problem.

[Geert_VDM]

I'm using version 1.1

Here's some more info:

I created about the same situation on another machine: create 2 volumes, 1 ntfs, 1 fat32. Install OS on the ntfs. Than I ran winpe on that machine, he also created the pagefile. BUT when i opened diskpart and looked for the volumes, the Info on the Volumes was empty and I could erase the disk:

PC 1 - With Problem

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info

---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

Volume 0 E BOOTCD CDFS DVD-ROM 157 MB

Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 47 GB Healthy Pagefile

Volume 2 D HP_Recovery FAT32 Partition 9 GB Healthy

PC 2 - Without Problem

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info

---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

Volume 0 E BOOTCD CDFS DVD-ROM 157 MB

Volume 1 C NTFS Partition 47 GB Healthy

Volume 2 D HP_Recovery FAT32 Partition 9 GB Healthy

So they both create a pagefile, but the first one on the C-drive, the second one somewhere else?

[JuMz]

Which version of PE you using, thought the latter versions didnt create a ramdisk. 1.6 here wipes the hard drive on those systems with no problem.

Quite the opposite. From the .chm's I read, none of the previous versions supported ramdisk...(though I'm sure you could have used other "unsupported" methods in creating it...). With my version (1.6 I think), there is supported documentation to create a ramdisk, which includes one of the steps as using only a Windows Server 2003 as your source...

[gadget]

Which version of PE you using, thought the latter versions didnt create a ramdisk. 1.6 here wipes the hard drive on those systems with no problem.

Quite the opposite. From the .chm's I read, none of the previous versions supported ramdisk...(though I'm sure you could have used other "unsupported" methods in creating it...). With my version (1.6 I think), there is supported documentation to create a ramdisk, which includes one of the steps as using only a Windows Server 2003 as your source...

Me Bad, been doing too much work with ramdrives withing ramdrives this week. I meant pagefile. Pe1.1 will make a pagefile regardless of RAM. Will se if I can dig out some info on it. Personally, get a latter version of PE....