Windows Mass-Partioning

[liveman]

Hi,

I need a bootable USB which can mass partition about 350 laptops. I have tried using the WAIK to create a bootable PE image, but it keeps crashing out when unmounting the image using DISM. Are there any free/alternative options you can recommend?

Thanks.

[jaclaz]

What do you mean "mass partition"?

You make a USB stick and you connect it to one machine and by sheer magic it partitions all of 250 of them at the same time or you insert the stick 250 times?

I mean it is no tlike the USB will wear much, i.e. there is not much difference if it is 1, 2 or many laptops.

Seriously , what do you really want to do?

Really only partitioning them?

Or partitioning the disk and formatting the created volume(s)?

Or partitioning the disk and formatting the volume(s) and deploy/install an OS on the volume(s)?

Are these laptops all identical?

There are several (unofficlal) tools to create PE's, which "base" OS are you willing to use for the PE?

Quick summing up:

XP/2003-> PE 1.x

Vista :ph34r:/2008-> PE 2.x

7/2008 R2-> PE 3.x

8/2012-> PE 4.x

8.1-> PE 5.x

For a PE 3.x/4.x simplest/quickest way is to use the QuickPE project:

http://reboot.pro/topic/18744-quickpe/

http://reboot.pro/files/file/340-quickpe/

or a MistyPE:

http://reboot.pro/topic/18917-mistype/

though your report of issues with DISM may anyway affect it's creation.

In it's simplest incarnation the QuickPE project does not make use of DISM, so it may work even in your setup

jaclaz