bassings

I raised the diskpart problem to microsoft this morning and this is the solution they gave me: POTENTIAL WORKAROUND #1: ------------------------ When creating the partitions for use with XP and 2003, you can use the following command to create the partition: create part primary align=16065 Advantage: No modifications required to the WinPE image itself or to the XP/2003 install image, only change is a slight modification to the diskpart script. Considerations: - This will leave anywhere from 16MB to 32MB of the disk unused. (This is not as big a deal as it might sound; even under the old XP partitioning scheme we always left from 1MB to 8MB of the disk unused. On modern-day disks this amount of space is trivial.) - If users look in Disk Management after the OS is installed, they will notice 16MB of unpartitioned space shown at the beginning of the disk. POTENTIAL WORKAROUND #2: ------------------------ Modify your WinPE 2.0 image to have the following registry changes: HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VDS\ALIGNMENT LessThan4GB REG_DWORD 0 Between4_8GB REG_DWORD 0 Between8_32GB REG_DWORD 0 GreaterThan32GB REG_DWORD 0 This can be done by modifying the registry hive in the boot.wim file used to create the WinPE disc. Then use diskpart as usual to partition the disc. I'm currently testing work around 2 on vmware. I've injected the registry changes in to my boot.wim by mounting it to a folder c:\Winpe\mount and the executing the following commands: reg load HKLM\PE-SYS c:\Winpe\Mount\Windows\system32\config\system Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v LessThan4GB /d 0 /f Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v Between4_8GB /d 0 /f Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v Between8_32GB /d 0 /f Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v GreaterThan32GB /d 0 /f reg unload HKLM\PE-SYS I can't confirm if this works or not yet. Cheers

I raised the issue to microsoft and they gave me the following answer back: POTENTIAL WORKAROUND #1: ------------------------ When creating the partitions for use with XP and 2003, you can use the following command to create the partition: create part primary align=16065 Advantage: No modifications required to the WinPE image itself or to the XP/2003 install image, only change is a slight modification to the diskpart script. Considerations: - This will leave anywhere from 16MB to 32MB of the disk unused. (This is not as big a deal as it might sound; even under the old XP partitioning scheme we always left from 1MB to 8MB of the disk unused. On modern-day disks this amount of space is trivial.) - If users look in Disk Management after the OS is installed, they will notice 16MB of unpartitioned space shown at the beginning of the disk. POTENTIAL WORKAROUND #2: ------------------------ Modify your WinPE 2.0 image to have the following registry changes: HKLM\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VDS\ALIGNMENT LessThan4GB REG_DWORD 0 Between4_8GB REG_DWORD 0 Between8_32GB REG_DWORD 0 GreaterThan32GB REG_DWORD 0 This can be done by modifying the registry hive in the boot.wim file used to create the WinPE disc. Then use diskpart as usual to partition the disc. I'm currently testing work around 2 on vmware. I've injected the registry changes in to my boot.wim by mounting it to a folder c:\Winpe\mount and the executing the following commands: reg load HKLM\PE-SYS c:\Winpe\Mount\Windows\system32\config\system Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v LessThan4GB /d 0 /f Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v Between4_8GB /d 0 /f Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v Between8_32GB /d 0 /f Reg Add "HKLM\PE-SYS\ControlSet001\Services\vds\Alignment" /t Reg_Dword /v GreaterThan32GB /d 0 /f reg unload HKLM\PE-SYS I can't confirm if this works or not yet. Cheers

Yeah I've since found out from this article http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?act=po...=81&t=88083 OK here is what Microsoft says: The BIOSes on these motherboards is incorrectly reporting CHS Values (240 heads). The problem has to do with the algorithm used to calculate CHS settings and the difference in policy between drive partitioning between Diskpart 1.5 (which aligns partitions on cylinder boundaries) and Diskpart 2.0 (which aligns them on 1MB boundaries). When partition sector comes along, that has been created with diskpart 2.0, Windows XP tries to change the values for the logical end of partition and translate them into CHS values, which fails therefore booting the operating system also fails. Your options are: -An updated BIOS from the motherboard vendor to correct the invalid CHS values. Many vendors have already corrected this and that is why some motherboards fail and others do not. *This is the ideal and correct solution* -A software change, if created, would be to Windows XP setup. This would then require you to update all of your Windows XP configuration sets to include the hotfix. -Use the older version of WinPE when installing XP. I am guessing the same applies for windows 2003. You mentioned you used Gdisk to fix the problem. What commandline did you use? Cheers

I am having the same problem. After some research I found that the new type of disk tables called Guid Partition Tables or GPT. More on GPT can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table I think you need to some how create the partition in the old MBR format instead of the new GPT format. I am theorising (and in the process of testing) that when you clean the disk you used the command convert mbr create the partition and then add the command ID=06 it should create a MBR partition instead of GPT. i.e. Diskpart select disk 0 clean convert mbr create partition primary size=32000 ID=06 Have no idea if this works or not but may give you something to look at? Will let you know if I find a way to get around this.