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nlite & partitions


gbmolina

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has somebody noticed that a win xp nlited installation cannot format a HDD with more than 2 partitions? i have confirmed this with two different computers and with two different nlited installation.

i wrote the author, but he did not reply.

am I the only one that has had this problem?

:unsure:

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has somebody noticed that a win xp nlited installation cannot format a HDD with more than 2 partitions? i have confirmed this with two different computers and with two different nlited installation.

i wrote the author, but he did not reply.

am I the only one that has had this problem?

:unsure:

Strange. I have 5 partitions and I didn't notice this problem since I started to use nLite.

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Can you tell us how you make partitions

i have no idea how they were made, those were machines that had the partitions already done.

when I make a partition, usually i determine the size of the system disk through the win xp CD and then just activate the rest through the administrative tools-disk management once the installation has finished. i don't see the point in making more than 2 partitions.

so, i have no idea if a third party resize software was used on those machines. but even if it was, a clean win xp cd was able to delete and format the partitions, the nlited one was not :blink:

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Let's not forget partitions can be of 2 types, primary or logical, they may be extended or not. I have always used ONLY primary partitions, never have more then 4 partitions on each drive.

in both cases there were three partitions: one primary and two logical. i.e. C, D, E

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If you can start all over again I would just delete all partitions and create one primary partition with un attended windows install. After that create one, two ot three PRIMARY partitions after you are back in windows. There are more ways of doing this but this is the simplest.

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If you can start all over again I would just delete all partitions and create one primary partition with un attended windows install. After that create one, two ot three PRIMARY partitions after you are back in windows. There are more ways of doing this but this is the simplest.

maybe i did not explain myself well: the nlited install cd won't format/delete the partitions at all. that is the problem. off course i trid to delete the whole thing before declaring that the nlited installation has some sort of problem in dealing with that case. what i do know is that the "clean" win xp cd does the trick. the nlited-does not.

keep in mind that i don't remove anything that is advided not to be removed from the installation.

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What I meant to say is completely delete the partitions not just format them. There are several ways to do that.

-If you booted from another disk you could work with My Computer > Manage > Disk Management or:

--CMD > diskpart > list disk > select yourdisknumber > clean

You end up with a single disk in raw format and no partitions; then start partitioning again.

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What I meant to say is completely delete the partitions not just format them. There are several ways to do that.

-If you booted from another disk you could work with My Computer > Manage > Disk Management or:

--CMD > diskpart > list disk > select yourdisknumber > clean

You end up with a single disk in raw format and no partitions; then start partitioning again.

to be honest, it never ocurred to me to try and delete partitions from within windows, i came accross that situation when the system disk was already formatted but the partitions were not deleted, because the install cd itself was not caple of doing it. only a not nlited win xp cd was able to delete the partitions.

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only a not nlited win xp cd was able to delete the partitions.

Yes that remains strange. I can barely imagine that you removed something that disabled disk management.

You might have an incomplete installation. Do you have nLite 1.4.8 for sure? Did you look at Windows\Setuperr.log?

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only a not nlited win xp cd was able to delete the partitions.

Yes that remains strange. I can barely imagine that you removed something that disabled disk management.

You might have an incomplete installation. Do you have nLite 1.4.8 for sure? Did you look at Windows\Setuperr.log?

for sure it was one of the last versions, i don't remember exactly which one. no, i have not looked in setuerr.log, but i imagine that is a log file to be found after the installation is complete. i'm complaining that i cannot install, because tha boot sectors/parition table or something else gets completely screwed up.

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In all the systems in the last year, ( a few more than 200, like 5 or 6 sometimes in a day ), I have seen this ONCE. It was on my fathers computer! Case: New Seagate 160GB hard disk. I could not get the OnTrack Disk Driver to load, and as a result, nLite could not get ONE or TWO partitions. I had to boot Windows, and partition the drive, and then after it copied ONE file, I opened the CD drawer, then let it error until DEAD.

Then I rebooted with the Seagate/OnTrack disk, and then booted with the nLite PE, and nLite was able to install.

OnTrack is an .exe driver, that if you just copy the .sys file, no good. It needs to A) Write the partition table, B) Be on the boot disk ( or have the origional disk for the drive ) and C) be able to be loaded into memory.

First I had partitioned the drive into two parts, 120GB System and Apps, and 40GB data, then later I used partiton Magic ( again, same thing: boot from Driver disk, then 'insert boot disk now' ), and made it 80GB for system and Apps, 3GB for a swap disk, and 76GB for data.

What you should look at is A) Partitoning the disk beforehand with your boot CD, then opening the CD Drawer, when it copies files.... then wait until the disk stops writing, reboot with your nLite PE boot disk, and install the OS.

This was a real head scratcher. What kind of computer? ( My dads is a Dell, cough cough cough )

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In all the systems in the last year, ( a few more than 200, like 5 or 6 sometimes in a day ), I have seen this ONCE. It was on my fathers computer! Case: New Seagate 160GB hard disk. I could not get the OnTrack Disk Driver to load, and as a result, nLite could not get ONE or TWO partitions. I had to boot Windows, and partition the drive, and then after it copied ONE file, I opened the CD drawer, then let it error until DEAD.

Then I rebooted with the Seagate/OnTrack disk, and then booted with the nLite PE, and nLite was able to install.

OnTrack is an .exe driver, that if you just copy the .sys file, no good. It needs to A) Write the partition table, B) Be on the boot disk ( or have the origional disk for the drive ) and C) be able to be loaded into memory.

First I had partitioned the drive into two parts, 120GB System and Apps, and 40GB data, then later I used partiton Magic ( again, same thing: boot from Driver disk, then 'insert boot disk now' ), and made it 80GB for system and Apps, 3GB for a swap disk, and 76GB for data.

What you should look at is A) Partitoning the disk beforehand with your boot CD, then opening the CD Drawer, when it copies files.... then wait until the disk stops writing, reboot with your nLite PE boot disk, and install the OS.

This was a real head scratcher. What kind of computer? ( My dads is a Dell, cough cough cough )

hm, interesting... the computers were not oem, i.e., no specific brand, i think assembled from different parts.

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