[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

Yes, but another problem showed up when I switched the WillShowUI to ALWAYS. The deployment wizard did not install Applications in the POST OS installation phase.

[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

Anyone???

[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

Cluberti

Seniore A little help would be appreciated...

[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

I don't know if it's a solution. But Somehow I did manage to get a Windows 7 Partition Wizard during the OS Installation Phase of the Deployment.

I disabled the Format And Partition Task in Task Sequence and then went on to edit the Unattend.xml file. There I added a setting Component from the Windows 7 image named "Disk Configuration" to the Answer file; though I didn't include any other sub-components. It was included under the 1 windowsPE ; Microsoft-Window-setup_neutral component. Then I selected the Disk Configuration and changed it's setting WillShowUI value to ALWAYS.

Rebuilt the .iso. When I ran the setup, the Windows 7 partition wizard, which would pop up during normal install, popped up.

Please tell me whether this was a correct step and if it would affect something at a later stage? sir Johan Arwidmark??

Thanks.

[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

The easiest way is to configure multiple task sequences in MDT, with different disk configurations. When editing the task sequence there is a nice UI for configuring multiple disks/partitions etc.

You can customize the MDT wizard (more advanced = requires custom scripting) to prompt you for partitioning layout.

You can also create multiple partiioning steps in the task sequence, and add condition to them,,, conditions like, if the harddrive is larger than 300 GB, create two partitions...

/ Johan

Thank you for the reply...

I'll go with your second option... I want the MDT Wizard to prompt me for partitioning layout... But I don't know how to script it....

That's why I quoted Cluberti's post.... I think making the Partition Wizard pop up during deployment was a good method... If Cluberti could spare a few minutes to please elaborate it...

[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

think all you need is something like this but am not sure with MDT

This contains a Recovery and the small system reserved, just modify and fix for what you need

partitions.cmd

diskpart
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary size=15000
format quick fs=ntfs label="Recovery"
assign letter="R"
set id=27
create partition primary size=300
format quick fs=ntfs label="System"
assign letter="S"
active
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows"
assign letter="W"
exit

Thanks for the Quick Reply... But What I need was a GUI or On Spot Customization of Formatting and Partitioning during Windows 7 deployment....

[HELP! MDT 2010 Format & Partition Drive Problem]

First of all, I consider myself too low on Tech-Knowledge so please pardon my noobness.

I used MDT 2010 to create an unattended Windows 7 installation, having some applications to be installed. All is fine except for one problem.

During the install, The MDT during PE does not ask for the customization of Drives i.e. Formatting and Partitioning. If the installed is a Fresh install, MDT by default wipes out all the drives and creates only one partition of all the available HDD space.

Now the problem is I don't want it like this. I have been searching for the solution for 26 hours. I have been through a lot of scripting and XML coding etc etc, but I ain't really in to these. (again pardon my noobness)

Then I found cluberti's post

if you had a portable partition/format app that ran as an .exe, you could probably insert it into the task sequence before that point and disable the task sequence pre-existing partition/format step. It could work, I would think. The download for Partition Wizard is self contained once installed on a test machine (or extracted from it's inno setup package - see innounp if you want to just extract it). Add the app to the \Scripts folder in the DeploymentShare or mount the PE WIM and add it to \Program Files there and unmount/commit, and then in the task sequence call a .cmd that runs "start /w <path to exe>" (you'll have to create this in the \Scripts folder of the deployment share - if you call the .exe directly, the task sequence won't pause and once the .exe launches, it'll continue and fail) as a task in the same location as the New Computer partition task (disable the partition/format task itself).

Rebuild your WIMs, and try again - instead of automatic formatting at that point in the task sequence, you should get a Partition Wizard GUI popping up which will allow you to partition/format the drive.

This was what he said

I Installed Partition Wizard on my computer. I copied the Partition Wizard installed folder and its files to the SCRIPTS folder of the deployment-share.

I then wrote a .cmd file, start /w X:\Deploy\Scripts\Partition Wizard\PartitionWizard.exe. Saved this file to the SCRIPTS folder.

In the Task Sequence, Under the New Computer Only group, I added a Run Command Line with the contents cscript.exe "%SCRIPTROOT%\PartitionWizard.cmd"

Completely Rebuilt Boot Images, but when the deployment commenced, the Partition Wizard did not start and gave 7 errors.

Can anyone help???

[MDT 2010]

It worked here - I made sure to install it on my machine first, and then run it once, and then copy the program files folder to the PE image (if you put it in the PE itself, it's X:\<path>, as it's running from the RAMdrive). As to what drive to install to, it simply starts at drive 0/partition0 and looks for a volume large enough to hold the files, and installs on the first one it finds, and it does this in one of the WSF files that runs at that point to bootstrap the installer.

I Installed Partition Wizard on my computer. I copied the Partition Wizard installed folder and its files to the SCRIPTS folder of the deployment-share.

I then wrote a .cmd file, start /w X:\Deploy\Scripts\Partition Wizard\PartitionWizard.exe. Saved this file to the SCRIPTS folder.

In the Task Sequence, Under the New Computer Only group, I added a Run Command Line with the contents cscript.exe "%SCRIPTROOT%\PartitionWizard.cmd"

Completely Rebuilt Boot Images, but when the deployment commenced, the Partition Wizard did not start and gave 7 errors.

Can anyone help???