Win2003SP1 Unattended via WinPE2005 on DL380G5 with MSA60. Incorrect Boot Order; WinSetup uses array

[HP Enterprise Developer]

Does anyone know of any boot order issues when calling WINNT32.exe via Windows PE 2005?

The BIOS boot order is set to P400 and drivers are both in WinPE and the Win2003SP1 unattended setup.

The attached MSA60 Smart Array is in PCIe slot 3 and is P800 controller. Again drivers in both.

The boot order is as follows:
P400
IDE
P800
The BIOS will not allow changing the IDE position.

This is what happens. WinPE detects the P800 as being the boot controller or detects the P400 as being it, but Windows Setup then uses the biggest disk available as the boot partition.

Upon reboot a blue screen happens, but if you then go into BIOS and switch boot order to being P800 instead of P400, Windows setup then appears and continues which proves that the BIOS is reporting P800 as boot partition to WinPE OR Windows Setup is using wrong drive. I suspect its WINPE as the first thing it does is format a C: partition succesfully - just C: on wrong disk set hence why proper boot partiton would state "Non System Disk..."

Anyone any thoughts on this ?

[Arian van der Pijl]

Hello,

I would start with no partitions defined. This way you can only define one partition on the P400 controller where Windows should be installed.

Maybe you can force Windows this way to install on your defined partition.

Regards,
Arian!

[Kedd Guyton]

While I agree with Arian, start with a simple machine, install Windows, add peripherals, I doubt customers would be satisfied with that workaround.

With that being said, I don't call Winnt32.exe from within WinPE 2005, but I can confirm that at least on an ML570 G3 with multiple SA-6400's, that the POST drive order, the Windows Server drive ordering, and WinPE 2005's drive ordering are different. This appears to be regardless of how the boot order is set in the ORCA and system RBSU or manual IRQ assignments for the SA-6400's.

What is particularly puzzling is why with the same system configuration that WinPE 2005 (generated from Windows Server 2003 SP1) and Windows Server 2003 SP1 do not always show the same drive ordering.

Sorry that this probably doesn't help much, but I just wanted to confirm what you're seeing.