softwarescout Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 All: Please forgive me if I am not posting in the right place as I am a a total noob here. I am working on my very first Microsoft cert, 70-680 and SIM is part of the process. I created an answer file that tries to write to the disk:partition(0:1) on a brand new Win7 VM in VMWare. I just created a standard HDD in VMWare and did make sure it was using SCSI 0:1. The VM fires up and does see my autounattend.xml file with no problem because the initial install window is skipped right over. However, as soon as that happens, my install errors out. The error message reads, "The partition selected for installtion (1) does not exist in disk 0. Make sure the unattend anwer file's <ImageInstall> setting references a valid partition on this computer, and then restart the installation". I'm sure this has to be something quite common that I am overlooking. I hope I have explained my issue well enough. Any help is much appreciated. Regards, Software Scout Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted June 5, 2011 Share Posted June 5, 2011 If you open a command prompt and run diskpart, did the partition get created and formatted? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softwarescout Posted June 5, 2011 Author Share Posted June 5, 2011 If you open a command prompt and run diskpart, did the partition get created and formatted?I do believe the disk has been formatted. I switched this whole process over to a laptop and when it failed again, I pulled the answer file out of the USB drive and re-started the Win install disk and when the install wizard got to the part about where to put the new install(on which disk) I clearly saw that the disk was formatted and ready to go. On either one, VM or bare metal, I got the exact same error message. And yeah, I'm 100% sure the disk got formatted.... the laptop had a pre-existing OS already on it and the answer file did wipe the disk then re-created/formatted the disk anew using the settings I established in the answer file. I've noticed that the error occurs on the part where Windows starts to copy out the install files onto the hard drive. I certainly hope I'm explaining myself properly. Again, this error is the same as when I tried on the New Virtual Machine I created. I've attached a copy of my autounattend.xml file. Hopefully that will help as well. Autounattend.xml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 That's really odd. I haven't used the SIM or answer files directly in a long time (use MDT!!! ), so other than the disk just not being available at the time it's parsed, I couldn't explain it (especially if diskpart sees it). Does it happen with our file on any other environment (Hyper-V, VirtualPC on Win7, etc), or is it just a VMWare issue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softwarescout Posted June 6, 2011 Author Share Posted June 6, 2011 That's really odd. I haven't used the SIM or answer files directly in a long time (use MDT!!! ), so other than the disk just not being available at the time it's parsed, I couldn't explain it (especially if diskpart sees it). Does it happen with our file on any other environment (Hyper-V, VirtualPC on Win7, etc), or is it just a VMWare issue?Yes. I've tried it on a laptop with pre-existing win7(in last post) and a new vmware image. I spent hours tweaking the XML file, thinking of possible other ways to approach this but it just keeps getting snagged after it reformats the disk. And I would use something else to do this but I'm studying for the Microsoft certain 70-680 and it's a requirement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softwarescout Posted June 30, 2011 Author Share Posted June 30, 2011 For anyone who may stumble on this same problem one day, let me enlighten you as to how this problem was resolved. First let me say though that I was surprised no one could help me but then again it is one of those weird problems that you really need to DO in order to understand. In all honesty, I still don't know EXACTLY what made it work but there are a couple of variables that I will share with you. My friend seems to believe that when I created the original Management VM with WAIK and SIM, etc, that I should not have split out the partition into two(with small amount for System Reserved). Windows does this by default if you click CUSTOM, NEW, APPLY. It created two Partitions. One for the OS and a smaller one called System Reserved. However, My friend said that it worked for him when he simply just clicked NEXT on that screen and let Windows only create one partition. I don't so much believe that was the solution BUT... it was something different than the way I did it originally. Second, this time I did not put my autounattend.xml on a USB Drive but rather created an .FLP file then loaded the xml file into that. You can use many programs (free) for this but I used MagicISO, created a 1.44Mb drive, put my .xml file into it, then named it. After that, I had to right-click the FLP and take off the extension so that it only had .flp on the end. By default MagicISO puts something else instead. Then, I added a floppy drive to the VM and pointed it to the FLP file. These two things are what I did differently and they worked. And, they work EVERYTIME. On a side note: keep in mind that I was using the TrainSignal 70-680 training video to learn about this and VMWare. So it was very specific. Best of Luck to you. SoftwareScout Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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