[MGadAllah]

Dear All:
I've been looking since a while for a way to format partetion C:
The entry should be like this:
format c: /fs:ntfs /q /y
I'd like to know how to do this job from a bootable cd automatically before the unattended setup begin, and without touching any other partetions in the same HD
NOTE: the AutoPartition=1 & Repartition = Yes | No entries in the answer file winnt.sif is not the thing or the one I'm looking for
and will I have to add any entry to winnt.sif?
I've been advised to use WinPE, but after reading about it I found my self can not determine the way to do this job automatically
Thanks

This post has been edited by mgadallah: 19 October 2006 - 06:12 AM

[fizban2]

mgadallah, on Oct 19 2006, 06:06 AM, said:

Dear All:
I've been looking since a while for a way to format partetion C:
The entry should be like this:
format c: /fs:ntfs /q /y
I'd like to know how to do this job from a bootable cd automatically before the unattended setup begin, and without touching any other partetions in the same HD
NOTE: the AutoPartition=1 & Repartition = Yes | No entries in the answer file winnt.sif is not the thing or the one I'm looking for
and will I have to add any entry to winnt.sif?
I've been advised to use WinPE, but after reading about it I found my self can not determine the way to do this job automatically
Thanks

boot from a bartPE or WinPe disk, preform the command then kick off your installation

[MGadAllah]

Can you tell me how or forward me to any tutorials!?
Thanks

[MGadAllah]

Any Reply yet!?

[dhdan]

I would say you could just put that command in startnet.cmd. The only problem is that you need to make sure when pe boots that it assigns the appropriate letter to your c drive. No matter my boot order it would assign c to my ide hard drive instead of my sata drive which is not what I wanted.

[MGadAllah]

dhdan, on Oct 21 2006, 07:31 AM, said:

put that command in startnet.cmd. The only problem is that you need to make sure when pe boots that it assigns the appropriate letter to your c drive. No matter my boot order it would assign c to my ide hard drive instead of my sata drive which is not what I wanted.

Thanks for your reply mate...BUT I'm afraid that I do not have enough information about creating such a file, and where to put it, and what should be the format or the layout of that file!?
Your feedback is much appreciated
Thanks

This post has been edited by mgadallah: 21 October 2006 - 11:58 AM

[dhdan]

If you have a copy of windows pe, follow the help file winpe.chm to make a custom copy of windows pe. You would add the line that you said format c: /fs:ntfs /q /y to the file startnet.cmd in the system32 folder. All this file is, is a batch file to execute when windows pe boots. By default it only has the following in it (plus a little message that I removed):

@ECHO OFF
START "Installing Components" /MIN OC2.bat
factory -winpe
@echo off

So yours would look like this

@ECHO OFF
START "Installing Components" /MIN OC2.bat
factory -winpe
@echo off
format c: /fs:ntfs /q /y

If you are familiar with batch files you can do such things as format the drives the way you want using diskpart (there is another way in pe to do it.) You could store your i386 folder on this disc and kickoff your install from there...x:\xp\i386\winnt32.exe /unattend....blah blah. You could kickoff the install over the network since pe supports networking. If you use images you can use ghost 8 in pe which would be the fastest way to get your system up and running. Store your image on another drive, boot to pe which automatically formats c: then loads your image using ghost. PE is a great tool and if you look around in the pe forum you'll find a ton of things you can do with it.

[MGadAllah]

Thanks a lot for your reply
I'll read the help file and look around in the forum
But will come here again if I will need any thing