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That is what I was looking for! At which point do you format your D: partition? Can it be done during the unattended installation or will I have to format the partition before installing?

Then it should be possible to format de drive first at that point with the format command (FORMAT D: /FS:NTFS), I presume? Can anyone tell me how far the registry entries are already entered at that point? When there are already entries containing the old C: path I will get a mix of two paths in the end.

I started at my own unattended install cd a while ago. The cd works pretty well, but there’s is one more thing I would like to automate. My hard drive is partitioned in several partitions. After the installation of Windows itself I first install a register editor and change the all the phrases “C:\Program Files\” to “D:\Program Files” with the search & replace function. Than I copy the Program Files directory to the D: partition. After a reboot I can delete the Program Files directory on the C: partition. Any other programs I install after that will have the right installation path because this path is also changed in the registry. (The following keys are responsible for that: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesDir and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ProgramFilesPath) ) First I searched for a command-line editor to change the registry settings out of a cmd window. I found a MS tool what can change registry keys, but it can’t search & replace. I also found a tool which has a search & replace option but it will cost $44.95. My question now is: is there any way to change the Program Files path with a (free) tool after the installation of Windows or is there even a better solution? Maybe it is possible to change the Program Files path during the installation of Windows (somewhere at the beginning of the GUI-mode setup?) so nothing has to be changed afterwards. When that is possible how can I avoid an additional problem of the D: partition that is not formatted at that point?