Network Install Drive Partitioning

[^eMpTy^]

So I've been doing a lot of experimentation with unattended cds and I've gotten to the poin that it looks like the only way I'll be able to do everything I want with it is if I do a network install. So I figured a BartPE would be the way to go with that along with some scripting.

The one hangup I can't seem to get past is paritioning the drives. Windows XP setup itself will happily run the cute little winnt.exe partition doodad that handles everything quite nicely...so I'm looking for a replacement that can run in a preinstall environment.

All I really need to do is set which partition to install on and give the option to delete or resize partitions. The winnt.exe version of this process is precisely what I need, but from what I can tell you can't quite run that from BartPE...

At this point I'm guessing the best way to do this would be to use diskpart.exe and do some scripting or use a batch file...but that seems like a lot of work and testing to replace a utility that is already perfectly suited to the task. How have other people gotten around this? Any recommendations?

TIA

-eMpTy

[likuidkewl]

You can do all of this from diskpart in a fairly easy fashion. EASY way Write a simple batch that ask's what size you want your partition to be via predefined values, or write a VBS which will make a diskpart script for you, save it to a ram drive or the like, then run the selected script and format the drive to end the batch.