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Drive pre-installation task breaks certain deployments

I'm trying to take one of our current images and set it up for manual USB stick imaging for "one offs" in some of our remote offices.  The making of the USB stick is no issue but the deployment itself isnt' working seems to be related to how the disk partitioning is working. When I image a system, in this case E7440/7450, and the deployment works fine to these machines.  I am unsure if the original captured image has 2 partitions or 1.  I do know that when finished, the system has a 200mb windows boot partition and the rest is allocated for the C: drive.  This is what we want but I think that the current pre-installation task isn't doing what want because certain machines "break" during the drive creation task. The current task does this:

select volume 0
remove all noerr
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary size=200
assign letter="C"
active
create partition primary
assign letter="D"
exit

It assigns a D drive yet that there is no D drive on the freshly imaged machine.  Any suggestions to improve it.  We take the machines out of the box, PXE boot to the K2 and image.

Ken-

3 Comments   [ + ] Show comments
  • It is important to determine if the image that you need to deploy contains 1 or 2 partitions because you will need different DISKPART pre-installation tasks.
    Then if you have two partitions (system + data) after using that script (that seems to me ok) you need to format both the partitions before be able to use them.
    You can find more here:
    https://support.software.dell.com/k2000-systems-deployment-appliance/kb/113970
    Kind regards,
    Marco - StockTrader - StockTrader 8 years ago
  • Time ago I realized a video on how to capture and deploy a system with the Windows System partition with KACE K2000:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVa5tOq_LYA
    Regards,
    Marco - StockTrader - StockTrader 8 years ago
  • Thanks Marco. I believe the image has the 2 partitions. When I boot up on the USB the deployment starts, gets to Apply Image and bombs with "Task Failed: ID 14 "Apply Image" Error code 6, Unknown error". This is just a USB deployment of an image that we use daily via our K2. When I pop out to a command prompt and run disk part the two partitions are there, C: and D: and already formated as they should be. I did mark all the files as "read only" on the USB which was suggested in the article on IT Ninja. - kenrinc 8 years ago

Answers (2)

Posted by: SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
Red Belt
1


for legacy you can use (the sys drive letter is meaningless to the OS it is used to put the files there)  You just need to pick one the usb or cd is not using.
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary size=200
assign letter="g"
create partition primary
assign letter="c"
active
exit

the format command

format /q /y /fs:ntfs /v:System g:
bootsect.exe /NT60 g:
format /q /y /fs:ntfs /v:Windows c:
bootsect.exe /NT60 c:

for uefi

Select disk  0
Clean
Convert gpt
Create partition efi size=200
Assign letter=s
Format quick fs=FAT32
Create partition msr size=128
Create partition primary
Assign letter=c
Format quick fs=NTFS
Exit


Comments:
  • Thanks. Yeah that make sense but after modifying the two scripts for this, apply image bombs with return code: 4294967295. Diskpart shows the two partitions formatted and ready to go. I've looked through various other pre-install scripts and none of them reference partitions or drives so I'm a bit confused. - kenrinc 8 years ago
    • on your master boot into a kbe
      go under recovery/command window
      run diskpart and list disk
      make sure your disk is 0
      if it is select disk 0 and then list partition and volumes and post what you get - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
      • Yup. List disk shows Disk 0 online. I do notice that when the imaging starts on a system previous to me modifying the scripts, the deployment starts by copying stuff to D:\MSOCache\All Users\...... but I assumed that the deploy script knows what disk it's deploying to...

        list volume:
        volume 0 C Boot NTFS part 200mb
        volume 1 D Windows NTFS part 238gb - kenrinc 8 years ago
      • that would be office going. did you list volume to verify c is system and d is os on your master? - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
      • Sorry just realized my partitioning is setup for windows 10 upgraded from windows 7 master image so the partitions do not follow default settings and most likely will not help - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
    • Did you find an answer to this? Because I am experiencing the same thing. - jbronston 6 years ago
Posted by: SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
Red Belt
1
open the deployment and look at the Notes: and does it say where it was harvested from?

Comments:
  • Harvested from C: and D: - kenrinc 8 years ago
    • so it is a two partition image. that is one way to tell if one ever messes with the notes that is put in during capture - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
    • ok could be your usb stick stepping on a drive letter or some other problem. the best way to trouble shoot this is to boot into the kbe and go to the command window. start diskpart select disk 0 enter list volume and see what drive letters are in use and assigned to what partition. - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
 
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