DanaGoyette

I'm rather new to this unattended install process; I've used nLite but I think that's caused a few problems in my current install. I'm already setting up drivers; All I need help with is enabling myself to set up the mappings manually before any files are copied to those two special folders. I'd think actually changing the drive letters (including the CD drive) at that point could break things. I don't want to break my system during the install. Edit: I just tried it in a virtual machine. It works! The command prompt came up properly before the "Welcome screen" style install portion. I'd like to be able to automatically have the command prompt echo something like "Use this chance to set up drive mountings as you like" or something. I only got one error: AcGenral.dll failed to copy even though it's on the ISO and it does extract from the compressed version with WinRAR. Of course, I'm expecting driver installs to fail. MS Virtual PC sure has an odd, mix of old hardware (emulated). Athlon XP + i440BX -- you don't see that every day! Now I just need to get rid of those "OMG New Start Menu!!!" banners -- maybe I'll switch to classic install. Edit again: Oh yeah, after testing, I found that RunOnceEx.cmd WASN'T run for some reason. I guess I have more testing to do.

I don't see exactly what NET USE will do for me; it seems to be for network shares. What I want is the DISKPART command ASSIGN - Assign a drive letter or mount point to the selected volume. Here's my partition table (note, there is a 9.542 GB space between end of extended and start of next; that was an error on my part, and I don't know if PartitionMagic can safely make it larger) Partition ### Type Size Offset ------------- ---------------- ------- ------- Partition 1 Primary 23 GB 32 KB (C:) Partition 2 Extended 149 GB 23 GB Partition 3 Logical 9 GB 23 GB (U:) (mount to c:\docs&settings) Partition 4 Logical 47 GB 33 GB (P:) (mount to c:\Program Files) Partition 5 Logical 93 GB 79 GB (D:) (mydocs, deal with it later) Partition 6 Unknown 1028 MB 182 GB (Linux Swap) Partition 7 Unknown 50 GB 183 GB (Linux reiserfs) Oh yeah, all I'd consider formatting would be U:. Who thought of "documents and settings" and "program files"? that takes too long to type! Why not just "Users" and "Programs"? Well, at least "Docume~1" and "Progra~1" work. I really do prefer the \home, \usr, \opt, etc... that Unix/Linux/BSD uses. My thinking is that it'll be easier to mount the folders at the start and leave drive letters how they are, rather than having to move the CD drive to F. What this will do is move the specific folders to their own partitions in a way that is transparent to the install. Later, I'll do the actual registry settings so I don't get "access denied" messages when dealing in the start menu due to the Recycle Bin's complete ignorance of mountings. I'm just wondering, if I put a call to diskpart in the preinstall.cmd, will I be able to set up the mountings and then resume the install and have the mounting remain? Also, what would I need to do to enable the use of diskpart at that stage? PS: Wow, while I was busy mucking around editing this post someone else responded. I'm slow!

I'm trying to do the same thing, even if I have to manually attend the diskpart portion to make partitioning not be hardcoded. I have my paritions set up as: C: (root) D: (mydocs) -- mount under U\(user name) manually AFTER install P: ("program files") U: (users/docs&settings) drive letters won't matter if mountings are guaranteed, and then I'll be able to use the autolettering script in RunOnceEx I need to ensure that these mappings are created before the beginning of setup(using the setupORG and preinstall.cmd method), and persist throughout the entire setup, so that I won't get in a catch-22 of being unable to move stuff to other partition to mount. I can do the drive letter changing later manually or as a script as long as this mounting is guaranteed to work. The same goes for registry search&replace later. at some point I may direct allusers to my profile so I don't have to deal with the distinction This is somewhat urgent -- my current XP install is getting a bit screwy, and I'd really like to reinstall some time this week!