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WinPE jobs fail on VM's where drives are all formatted as NTFS

Updated: 21 May 2010 | 4 comments
mojomatt's picture
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This issue has been solved. See solution.

Hi,

Have any of you run into this...?

Altiris DS 6.9.  Goal, build a VM.

If all my drives in the VM are formatted as NTFS, any Altiris job that runs in the WinPE2.1 Pre-Boot environment will fail with the error "incorrect function ".  The failure comes even before the contents of the first script begin to execute.  If I run a job in a DOS Pre-Boot environment it runs just fine.

I don't experience this issue on physical hardware, only on VM.  The way I'm getting around it for now is to run a DOS job that wipes all disks prior to launching into WinPE to re-create them and install Windows.

Any thoughts?

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mlogan's picture
25
Nov
2009
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Hi, Not sure if I understand

Hi,

Not sure if I understand you correctly.

You could use DISKPART to delete any existing partitions on your VM.
The way you do that is as follows:

  • Create an answer file that Looks something like:
    select disk 0
    Select partition 1
    delete partition

    Place it in \\ALTIRIS_SERVER\express\scripts and call it clearpart.txt

  • Create a RUN SCRIPT task in your job (it has to be the first task) and let it run under WinPE. The job should look like:
    REM Delete C
    if exist C: DISKPART /S %ALTIRIS_SHARE%\scripts\Clearpart.txt
     

Of course in case you have more disks tou'll have to extend this allittle in order to cope with the extra disks.

I hope this is what you are looking for and that it makes sence.

________________
/mlogan

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mojomatt's picture
25
Nov
2009
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 Actually the problem I'm

 Actually the problem I'm having is actually running a script through Altiris.  Here's the scenario...I have a VM with X number of disks and they are all formatted as NTFS.  I boot the VM, it checks into Altiris and then I send a job to it and it fails.  The job is set to run in a WinPE2.1 pre-boot environment.  The script never executes - I know this because if I populate the script with 1 line such as PAUSE it never even gets to the PAUSE statement - it fails before the script executes.  If I use a pre-boot environment of DOS, it works OR if the disks aren't formatted as NTFS the script works.  Hope that makes sense.

Thanks

mlogan's picture
27
Nov
2009
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# of drives

So it seems that you might have more then 4 disks on your VM and since WinPE tryes to map the eXpress share as F you are trying to map a drive letter that allready exists.

If this sis the case, you could change the driveletter being mapped during PXE.

________________
/mlogan

Connect Etiquette: Please "Mark as Solution" those posts which resolve your problem, and give a thumbs up to useful comments, articles and downloads!

mojomatt's picture
30
Nov
2009
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Yes indeed!  Wow, that's some

Yes indeed!  Wow, that's some pretty good sleuthing.  Thanks so much for your help!