Create media for automated unattended install of Windows 10  

Thanks for your reply, Kari! So I'm have another issue; I'm able to install my image with no problems on the HP Elitebooks that we use. However, when I try to use it on a Lenovo Thinkpad T540p or T550, I'm getting an error with creating a partition in the first part of the setup:

"Windows could not create a partition on disk 0. The error occurred while applying the unattend answer file's <DiskConfiguration> setting. Error code: 0x80042565"

The answer file works fine on the HP... so why am I getting this error on the Lenovo's?

thanks very nice and useful

Hi Kari,
Thanks for this amazing tutorial! I have though a couple of questions, basically regarding to this step:
3.11) Select the disk you added in Answer File pane, set DiskID to be 0 and WillWipeDisk to true:

1. If I have several disks on my computer, how can I make sure it will prepare the image, to install windows on the right disk?
2. As I have a Desktop and a Laptop, how can I make sure, that on each of them I'll be installing windows on the right primary disk? (Since windows changes Drive letters).
On both cases, the primary disk will be an M2 SSD disk, but I have on both machines other disk partitions which I want to preserve from being deleted or wiped

My last question is regarding how can I integrate the "Move users folder tutorial" (especially the part when the User folder is moved into a different drive, during Windows installation).

What I intend is to create a Windows installation cd/usb in which I can automatically move the users folder during the installation, but silently, if possible, so I could skip the part of pressing SHIFT+F3 during the network setup screen and doing it manually. You think this is possible, to make it all automated?


Thanks very much for your help!

Kari said:

It seems that you must forget automating first phase of Windows installation, Step Three in tutorial completely. If you do Step Three (3.1 through 3.22) the whole disk, all partitions on it will be wiped clean and any existing data will be lost. There is no way you can leave existing partitions intact.

In your case, just do Steps One and Two, skip Three, then continue from Four.

Kari

Hi Kari,
Thanks for you superquick reply! LEt me explain you a bit more about how I have my disks configured:
A) My Laptop: A primary SSD disk where windows is installed, and a Secondary Disk where I have 4 partitions (\Documents, \Downloads, so on...)
B) My desktop: A primary SSD disk where Windows is installed, a secondary SSD with \Users folder (Thanks for it!) and a RAID 1 disk with 4 partitions (Documents, Downloads, etc).

So, in your tutorial, you mention to set a Disk ID when adding a new disk. I dont mind creating the system partitions when installing Windows 1709, but I'd need to be sure that Windows will be installed in the right disk, otherwise I could lose information :)
3.11) Select the disk you added in Answer File pane, set DiskID to be 0 and WillWipeDisk to true:

In my case, on Laptop the primary disk might as well be DiskID 0, but on my Desktop it's DiskID 1 (since it's a PCI SSD)

I guess that if I skip whole Step 3, I'll be able to choose in which Disk can I install windows, am I right?
If that's the case, it doesn't bother me, since I prefer to make sure where windows will be installed :)

Thanks for your excellent support, I'll keep digging in your tutorials!!

Cool! I'll try this weekend :) By the way, if the user folder exists, let's say in drive D:, Will it be overwritten during installation, or if it already exists, will be kept with all data? :)

I intend to re-install windows with this image, with my same existing username located on the d:\users folder

Will it be ok, and all data kept exactly as is now?

Thanks so much for your patience!

I think Kari that step 6.3, 6.4 & onwards can only be performed on a physical machine & not on a virtual machine (virtualbox) as it is not possible to send the crtl+alt+f3 command to a virtual machine