Vista - Using Diskpart in VM's

Hi,

I'm new to using VM's and was wondering how you can script disk partitioning
in a VM environment. I am currently experimenting with Virtual box, but
also use Microsoft Virtual PC at times as well. I'm assuming Diskpart
would work the same in both. I dabble in automated workstation builds and
I'm trying to setup a test enivornment for my scripting by using a VM rather
then constantly relying on hardware.

Here's what I normally do:

I boot from a Bart PE CD and then map a drive to a network share and then
run my batch/script from the share. The batch file calls Diskpart and I
have an answer file for diskpart such as:

Select Disk 0
CLEAN
Create Partition Primary Size=12229
Select Partition 1
Assign letter c
Active
Select Disk 0
Create Partition Primary
Select Partition 2
Assign letter d

So is this how I'd do this under a VM? It doesn't seem to work....

Any guidance would be appreciated. My end goal is to setup a dual
partition VM and then launch an unattended install of Windows XP. Why
dual partition? My unattended install puts Documents and Settings on the D
drive.

Thanks!

>So is this how I'd do this under a VM?

Yep.
What's going wrong? Have you tried to do it manually to see what's
failing?

--
Bob Comer



On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 13:15:17 -0400, "TheMachineRNC"
<TheMachineRNC@xxxxxx> wrote:

Bob,

I finally got it to work. It appears to work and here's what my batch file
looks like: (see another problem and question below)

ECHO CREATING PARTITIONS...
ECHO
DISKPART /s H:\DISK.TXT
FORMAT C: /FS:NTFS /V:C_DRIVE /Q /Y
FoRMAT D: /FS:NTFS /V_DRIVE /Q /Y
MD D:\i386
ECHO COPYING SOURCE MATERIALS TO HARD DRIVE...
ECHO
ECHO
XCOPY H:\OSES\XPVOL\I386\*.* /S D:\i386
ECHO
ECHO
ECHO LAUNCHING UNATTENDED INSTALL OF XP, PC WILL AUTOMATICALLY REBOOT...
ECHO
ECHO
D:\I386\WINNT32.EXE /S:\I386 /UNATTEND:\I386\UNATTEND.TXT
ECHO
ECHO
ECHO REBOOTING PC...
ECHO
ECHO
REBOOT

The issue where I run into trouble is after the Windows XP unattended
install begins to start it comes back with a message about not having a
valid partition to install to. Is there a command that I can run to
initialize the partitions so the unattended install will recognize them?

Thanks!

"Robert Comer" <bobcomer-removeme-@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0cd455lebq0k5b849hkorhkh6p9gpcglrj@xxxxxx

> The issue where I run into trouble is after the Windows XP unattendedIt's really beyond my knowledge, but I'll give it a stab -- have you tried
adding the /t switch to your winnt32 command?

So it should be:

D:\I386\WINNT32.EXE /T:C: /S:\I386 /UNATTEND:\I386\UNATTEND.TXT

--
Bob Comer

"TheMachineRNC" <TheMachineRNC@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:P9-dneyHY9sl0cjXnZ2dnUVZ_qGdnZ2d@xxxxxx