Our teacher has give us a challenge figure out how to make 2 partition during a XP Pro unattended install. We are using Winnt.sif on a floppy and Win Xp pro cd in the drive. Is it possible using this setup?

from what i gather you need to use either winpe or bartpe to do this as it isn't a function you can do unattended otherwise.

you can do with manual interaction though

The teacher say it possible without Bart Pe or Win Pe. So is another way?

if it is your teacher may be the first to figure it out. Let us know when he shows the class

so can you point me in direct in how to use Bart PE. We don't have a cd burner could we us the network to use Bart PE? What we need to do is create two partition and set one for the windows page_file.

does the whole processs have to be unattended?

Because manually you can create multiple partitions, you just can't format all of them until windows is loaded.

You can create the partitions manually during the installation drive selection, but you can only format one partition, the one you install to. After windows is up and running you can format the others. But to my knowledge there is no way to create the partitions unattended without booting to another environment first.

It has to be unattended. But how do you control the size of partition that windows installs to?

You can do this without much issue. It all depends on if the teacher wants you to do it before windows is installed. If that's the case, WinPE or BartPE (or some third party partitioning tool) would have to be used. Otherwise, upon first boot-up, you can write a DISKPART script if you want to create the other partitions. You can read up on DISKPART on MS's website.

where does the Diskpart script go?

Inside the Winnt.sif? We have been working on this problem for able 8 hours.

In Winnt.sif you can create a line for RunOnceEx (read up on the tuturial here). In that RunOnceEx, you can call a .bat or .cmd file OR call DISKPART then the txt file containing the script.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...t.mspx?mfr=true

This site has all of the diskpart commands you will need. I believe you can set the size of the first partition in winnt.sif but I could be wrong.

I remember seeing somewhere that when doing a CD install, you can use the [RemoteInstall] section (I believe) to partition your drive to be a set size. Something like "Size=40000" to create a 40GB C drive. Then you can run a script that will use DiskPart to create the D drive and then relocate the swap file.

@mmarable that section is only applicable to RIS installs

@redfive19, i think he needs the partitions to be created at start of install so to be called after os is installed wouldn't help.

@braven, to get BartPE view this website: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

to get WinPE you need a specific MS license.

and i agree with iceman, can you get your teacher to the rest of us as i'm intrigued and i'm sure so will a lot of other people

Okay he say we are allowed to type in one command to start a batch file.

So the RunOnceEq will run the batch file before it does the rest of the setup?

I'm in Braven's class btw..

Edited May 18, 200620 yr by chelt

no because runonceex runs AFTER windows has been installed and when the fist user, normally administrator, has logged in.

i reckon you need a win98se boot disk with a batch file that runs diskpart to create partitions and then runs the winnt.exe /switchesneeded command at which point you insert cd and watch it go

no typing of commands but possible solution