BlueFlame Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 Hello all,I would like to know if it is possible to force the unattended install on the 1st drive 1st partition and to quick format that in NTFS.So I have one drive, with two partitions, and an installed winXP professional on the first partition. Now I want to just put in the unattended cd, and let it install without interferance.If I put AutoPartition=1, it will install on the second partition (where all my personal files are ) becouse it sees a winxp installation on the first one.How do I force it to unattend install on the first partition?thanx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bâshrat the Sneaky Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 Why don't you just set AutoPartition=0 and select the desired partition? No mistakes possible and takes only 1 minute, the other, huge part of the installation is unattended... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueFlame Posted May 20, 2004 Author Share Posted May 20, 2004 Why don't you just set AutoPartition=0 and select the desired partition? No mistakes possible and takes only 1 minute, the other, huge part of the installation is unattended...Whell, it's not for me... It's for some people who don't know much about how to install anything. So I don't want to give them a chance to screw up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godfatha Posted May 20, 2004 Share Posted May 20, 2004 you would have to make something like that: [Data] AutoPartition=1...[unattended]Repartition=No/YesFileSystem = ConvertNTFS...so, autopartition = 1 will make Windows choose the partition to install on.there are some rules on what windows chooses its partition. In the normal case windows always installs itself on C:\ i have never heard of something different. but the way setup detects c:\ is the strange part. typically c:\ is the primary partition of your drive, but windows could also interpret an extended partition as c:\ if the primary partition isn't created. Or if the extdended Partition is active and the primary ain't. But if both are active it chooses the primary one. same for having 2 hdd's, if the first has no partitions created but the 2nd hdd does the c:\ would be (typically) on the 2nd drive. the other cases like on the 1st drive are non active but on the 2nd normally causes windows NOT to choose the active partition from the 2nd drive, but the primary of the 1st drive. I know it's kinda strange, but those cases i've seen at work, so it seems that windows chooses somehow the install-partition on "good-luck".The Repartition switch will cause that the Partitions on the first hdd are deleted (so be carefull) and one big, new partition will be created, that one will be formated with ntfs. I had one case, that the old partitions weren't deleted, but the first partition was deleted, recreated and formated. Note that the partition is not a quick formate...the last switch just assures that the filesystem is kept ntfs and not fat32, you can normally delete that line, i just know that this setup created so far no problems if you make sure that you don't loose your data by Repartitioning.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueFlame Posted May 20, 2004 Author Share Posted May 20, 2004 you would have to make something like that: [Data] AutoPartition=1...[unattended]Repartition=No/YesFileSystem = ConvertNTFS...so, autopartition = 1 will make Windows choose the partition to install on.there are some rules on what windows chooses its partition. In the normal case windows always installs itself on C:\ i have never heard of something different. but the way setup detects c:\ is the strange part. typically c:\ is the primary partition of your drive, but windows could also interpret an extended partition as c:\ if the primary partition isn't created. Or if the extdended Partition is active and the primary ain't. But if both are active it chooses the primary one. same for having 2 hdd's, if the first has no partitions created but the 2nd hdd does the c:\ would be (typically) on the 2nd drive. the other cases like on the 1st drive are non active but on the 2nd normally causes windows NOT to choose the active partition from the 2nd drive, but the primary of the 1st drive. I know it's kinda strange, but those cases i've seen at work, so it seems that windows chooses somehow the install-partition on "good-luck".The Repartition switch will cause that the Partitions on the first hdd are deleted (so be carefull) and one big, new partition will be created, that one will be formated with ntfs. I had one case, that the old partitions weren't deleted, but the first partition was deleted, recreated and formated. Note that the partition is not a quick formate...the last switch just assures that the filesystem is kept ntfs and not fat32, you can normally delete that line, i just know that this setup created so far no problems if you make sure that you don't loose your data by Repartitioning....I tried the Autopartition=1 switch in combination with the Repartition=No and Filesystem=ConvertNTFS on a test system of mine. It had 2 hd's in the following config:Hdd1Partition 1: Active (Win 98 installed)Partition 2: Personal file's, Fat32Hdd2Partition 1: Active (Win 98 installed)Partition 2: Personal file's, fat32.guess which one the install chose..... Partition 2 on Hdd2, so I don't want that to happen again. (and yes, it converted it to NTFS as planned)The uninstall choses the first partition where no windows install is found... (or so tells the info on the microsoft page)So the question remains.... Hou to unattended force it to install on the 1st partition of the 1st hdd even if windows (98, 2000, xp, whatever) is installed on that partition? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[BM]Crusher Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 AutoPartition=1Windows will search for the first hard drive (or partition) that has sufficient free space (or chooses the one with the most free space)best bet, do what everyone else does: Set AutoPartition=0 and manually choose the partition you want Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueFlame Posted May 21, 2004 Author Share Posted May 21, 2004 Crusher,May 20 2004, 08:13 PM] AutoPartition=1Windows will search for the first hard drive (or partition) that has sufficient free space (or chooses the one with the most free space)best bet, do what everyone else does: Set AutoPartition=0 and manually choose the partition you wantSo it can't be done? such a simple wish and microsoft hasnt figured that out themselves...to bad... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[BM]Crusher Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 I'm fairly positive it can't be done.. I had the same problem a few weeks ago on a mates, so I had to re-burn the disk and change the winnt.sif to manual partition selection Did you search the forums? Someone might have figured out a way to do it I dunno Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueFlame Posted May 24, 2004 Author Share Posted May 24, 2004 Crusher,May 21 2004, 01:47 AM] I'm fairly positive it can't be done.. I had the same problem a few weeks ago on a mates, so I had to re-burn the disk and change the winnt.sif to manual partition selection Did you search the forums? Someone might have figured out a way to do it I dunnoI searched everywhere... Tried some posibilities, but they don't work.Going to try one last thing this evening... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueFlame Posted May 25, 2004 Author Share Posted May 25, 2004 ok... that didn't work either...Someone has any clue?thnx. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Markymoo Posted May 25, 2004 Share Posted May 25, 2004 You can make a dos bat file that will run winnt32.exe from your cd. This will force it to install/setup to that location. You can also specify your answer file on the command line too. This will be automated.This will create an install on D: Change this to your requirements.The CD is the source where your setup files are coming from in this case E:Make a dos batch file. and include the below.E:\I386\winnt32.exe /syspart:D: /tempdrive:D: /unattend:E:\I386\winnt.sif /s:E:\I386 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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