VMWare Workstation 17.6 and answer files.

I would to use the Windows 11 ADK to map out a hard Disk with Windows 11 Insider Preview 10.0.26200.5570 with 7 partitions. If I use VMWare Workstation and run an ISO. Will VM Ware create the partitions on the virtual HardDisk?

Rbcc said:

I would to use the Windows 11 ADK to map out a hard Disk with Windows 11 Insider Preview 10.0.26200.5570 with 7 partitions. If I use VMWare Workstation and run an ISO. Will VM Ware create the partitions on the virtual HardDisk?

Click to expand...

First, VMware does not automatically create any partitions for you, just like a real system would not automatically create any partitions. As for Windows setup, on both a real machine and a VM, it will create <<< 4 >>> partitions for you on a UEFI system, not 7 partitions.

If you truly need to create 7 partitions, there are several options that you have:

1) You can manually create those partitions during Windows installation.

2) You can create a simple script for diskpart to automate the creation of partitions.

3) The title of your post references "answer files". You can easily create an answer file that will automate the creation of the seven partitions.

Do you need help with any of this?

If you provide to me specific details, I can help you get this done. Here is the info I would like to have:

1) Tell me what method you want to use. If you do indeed want to use an answer file, do you also want that answer file to completely install Windows unattended? If so, onto what disk do you want to install Windows? On a lot of system you would install to disk 0, but not always. If you are uncertain let me know and I will tell you how to get the correct disk number.

2) On a UEFI system, the 4 partitions created by Windows by default are these:

EFI (System) partition
MSR (Microsoft System Reserved partition)
Windows partition
Recovery partition

Since you note that you want 7 partitions, please let me know what types of partitions you want to create for the other three partitions and what size each partition should be. Please also include the order of these partitions, for example, I would make the assumption that you want these other partitions to come after the 4 partitions created for Windows.

You can easily create an answer file that will automate the creation of the seven partitions. I took these from Kari's Win 10 Tutorial on how to do this. But I was wondering ifb I add 4more apps,utils temp and downloads. Then put this in autounattend.xml will Vmware create these parttitions on a476.92 hard disk? if I create a batch file to create directories in those partitions will VMware create said partitions??

Rbcc said:

You can easily create an answer file that will automate the creation of the seven partitions. I took these from Kari's Win 10 Tutorial on how to do this. But I was wondering ifb I add 4more apps,utils temp and downloads. Then put this in autounattend.xml will Vmware create these parttitions on a476.92 hard disk? if I create a batch file to create directories in those partitions will VMware create said partitions??

Click to expand...

Again, VMware has nothing to do with it. If you create an answer file to create the partitions, it will do so whether you are on VMware or not. VMware does not create the partitions - Windows setup does. So, there is no difference in that regard with partitioning.

Great support,

Rbcc said:

Great support,

Click to expand...

If you need any help, let me know

When you need to create additional data partitions on the system disk, it exposes a major drawback of using <DiskConfiguration> compared to using a diskpart script. The <Extend>true</Extend> directive for <CreatePartition> only works for the last partition assigned to a disk.

Suppose your desired disk layout is:

If you know the target disk's total capacity in advance, you can assign a fixed size for every partition. But if you're not sure of the disk's size or want to dynamically adjust the Windows partition to fit whatever wasn't allocated to other partitions, then you need to use diskpart.



diskpart commands:

You can follow the current best practice, and move the Recovery partition at the end, right after Windows.

diskpart commands:

My point is WSIM has a limitation, because it can only handle situations where the exact disk layout is planned in advance (by you) or the Windows partition is the always last partition on the disk. Since the current guide for handling the unexpected growth of the Recovery partition is to keep Recovery at the disk's end, using <DiskConfiguration> in the answer file is no longer helpful.

Here is my autounattend.xml in 7zip format where do I put it on my windows 11 installation disk will Windows 11 see it and run through it? Thanks

This unattended file won't work:

1. You failed to create the MSR and Recovery partitions (which 24H2's Setup will immediately fail on because it's missing).
2. There are two different volumes assigned to Utilities (U:)
3. There is no explicit <InstallTo>, so Setup might pick the wrong partition to begin installing into.


You will have to check the math of the total MB's. And adjust the partition sizes if you disagree on them, with the final sum of all partition sizes equal or less than the disk size reported in your VM.

This file needs to be inserted into the root folder of the ISO image.