OS deployment problem

[Nicolas19]

Hello everyone,

I'm having a small problem deploying my OS (since the new version 2.6.0.16881, I imagine, because it worked before).
Everything goes smoothly until I get to the Windows 11 installation screen, where I get a partition error message and the installation fails.

Until now, I've never needed a disk formatting script because everything went well, but I have the feeling that diskpart is damaging my disk.

Do you have any idea what could be causing this?
(For your information, all my computers are Dell, and I'm using a WinPE key generated by the WAPT server.)

Thank you.

[dcardon]

Hello Nicolas,

several potential problems:
* Did you boot in legacy or UEFI mode?
* We've seen an issue with retrieving disk information on WinPE. Could you update wads-requirements, which includes the WMI module that corrects certain scenarios where the BIOS/UEFI doesn't return the correct information?
* Older templates with a 100MB WindowsRecovery partition normally don't cause problems on a new installation, but they can cause issues on upgrades. It's been increased to 500MB by default in the latest releases. But it shouldn't cause any problems during the initial installation.
* Disk drivers aren't available in WinPE, but if the deployment worked previously on the same machine, it should still work...

Best regards,

Denis

[Nicolas19]

Hi Denis, and first of all, thank you for your quick reply.

So, I did see an update for wads-requirements, which I hadn't paid attention to at the time.
I recreated my bootable USB drive and ran another test.
Unfortunately, that didn't fix the problem, and I still get the error message as soon as Windows starts installing:
"Setup could not create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. Check the logs, etc., etc."

To add some information:
The PC boots fine in UEFI mode, and as with all the DELL laptops I've deployed using WAPT, I have to change the storage mode from RAID ON to AHCI/MVMe because otherwise, during deployment, diskpart also formats my bootable USB drive.

[dcardon]

Hi again Nicolas,

thanks for the additional information. Could you please check that WinPE is correctly recognizing the disk using `diskpart /list disk` [1]? You can press Alt+Tab when you're on the crashed Windows Installer interface to bring back the MS-DOS window.

Regards,

Denis

[1] https://www.diskpart.com/fr/windows-10/ ... -10.html#3

[Nicolas19]

I can't take a screenshot, but it looks like this is from one of the command prompt windows:
X:\Windows\System32\cdm.exe -x \dlls\wgetwads64.exe -- config=x:\dlls\wapt-get.ini.
I get a successful diskpart run with my volumes
: Volume 0 for C:\Windows,
Volume 1 for S:\SYSTEM,
Volume 2 for R:\Recovery
, and Volume 3 for my USB drive.

However, if I run diskpart /list disk,
disk 0 is the laptop's SSD and disk 1 is my USB drive.

If it's looking for the system partitions on my USB drive, I think that's where the problem lies.

[dcardon]

Hi Nicolas,

once the machine boots into WinPE, you should be able to detach the USB drive to ensure there's no interference (although it should work fine). As for WAD screenshots, that can be done with a mobile phone.

Is the Windows 11 ISO you're using the 24H2 build from last September? Did you slipstream any KB articles into it?

Regards,

Denis

[Nicolas19]

I admit I was hesitant to take a picture with my phone.

But your workaround worked by removing the USB drive once I was in the WinPE environment.
The installation started without any errors, so everything's fine for me.

Thanks again for your availability, advice, and responsiveness.