convert.exe with /cvtarea: parameter during XP installation from network share
From: Reinhard Binder (rbwerbung_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/13/04
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Date: 12 Mar 2004 21:03:56 -0800
Hello alltogether!
Of course I know that I should post my question in a compressed form.
Sorry, but the following is the shortest description for my problem I
was able to write (now) <g> ...
I want to install XP professional on a couple of workstations from a
network share. Most stuff to do so is similar to W2K, so it was not
so difficult to get it up and running. My unattended script runs fine
- only the cluster size of the NTFS partition is not optimal.
AFAIK, I have to set up a FAT partition for the network install - the
very first stage of the setup process copies the files from the
installation share to the local hard disk. My network boot disk (W98)
supports only FAT, so I created a primary partition with 6 GB and
formated it with FAT32.
The help file coming with the XP Deployment package (REF.CHM from
xpsp1DeployTools_de.cab) tells me to use the convert.exe command-line
tool instead of the FileSystem=ConvertNTFS entry in my unattended.txt
to get optimal performance of my hard disk.
Sounds easy ... but that brings up two (or maybe more) new challenges:
(1) http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.mspx
(and some other documents found in the fine web) tell us that we
should use the /cvtarea switch when we run convert.exe to get an
optimal Master File Table.
(2) Only AFAIK (sometimes i try to think before i act <g>): if the
drive is an NTFS drive _before_ the GUI part of setup starts, NTFS
permissinons are set to important folders like %SYSTEMROOT%,
%PROGRAMFILES%. When you run convert after setup finished (IMHO also
if you trigger it via CMDLINES.TXT), the NTFS permissions to these
folders are inherited from the root folder. Ok, in XP the root folder
has higher security permissions like in NT4 or W2K, but it contains
the permission to create folders and append data for the users group.
And now I'm sitting here and look around for a way to trigger the
convert.exe using the /cvtarea switch at the right time (I think that
is at the end of the text setup). The documentation for
unattended.txt brought no information to me (I hope that I didn't
overlook something), also a search in the fine web was unsuccessful.
But I'm sure that anybody out there has solved this problem earliler
and will be so nice to share the solution with me and others.
Thanks in advance
Reinhard
PS: please excuse any spelling and typing errors - english is not my
primary language ...
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