Windows AutoUnattend problem, possibly partition

[Konini]

I broke the screen of a laptop (it's a spare, hooked up to a monitor).  Don't have a pressing need to fix it (expensive touch screen) and it runs perfectly, but I need to do a full reinstall of Windows. I'm testing it out on another laptop before commiting myself, both are HP's of a very similar model/age.  Having to do an autoinstall as the monitor driver doesn't kick in unti the setup is about half way through.

I've tried everything in my armoury and a couple of things Google told me to, but I just can't get the unattended.xml to catch at boot - got the answer file from a website and wrote my own in ADK, tried having it done as MBR and UEFI, changed the usb to GPT.  Nothing working.  I have a feeling it's something to do with the partition - I have the O/S isolated on drive C:/.  The answerfile has provision for disk and partition numbers, both triple checked to be ok.

 

Does anyone have any ideas?  I'm probably going to wait to do the broken one until the new version comes out next week, but I'd like to be ready to go.

 

(I'm getting too old for this.  There was a time when I would have taken this in my stride, enjoyed the challenge of solving it even.  Now I just can't be bothered so have become one of those people who just ask  - at least I spent a couple of hours on it first).

[userabcd]

Connect your broken screen laptop to an external monitor or TV.

 

Download and install a bootable windows 10 to a usb using the windows own small software.

 

Plug the usb into with windows into  a usb port and boot the laptop.

 

Press esc or F10 rapidly whilst the pc is booting and it should get you into the bios.

 

Select or move to boot the usb uefi or legacy version of the windows.

 

Let the pc reboot itself and windows will start the reinstall.

 

 

Or

 

take the harddisk out of the broken laptop, connect the harddisk to a working pc via usb and sata connector.

 

Open disk part in windows or linux and carefully select the usb harddisk and delete all the partitions on the harddisk 1x1 and then format that disk.

 

Install the harddisk back into the broken screen laptop and then plug in the windows usb and boot the laptop.

 

Windows should start installing.

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by userabcd

[Konini]

Aw, I thought there'd be an easier way out. 

I can boot to the bios OK, but when it restarts to Windows install there's only the broken screen (monitor drivers install part way through installation) so unfortunately that one's out.

 

Option 2 involves work - haven't opened the beast so far , but if I stuff it up I'm looking at replacing a big SSD as well as the screen. The other partitions are jam packed so I'd rather not do that if I can avoid it, but.. thinking out loud now... If I can get the disk to boot to one of the other laptops' screens rather than to the monitor via hdmi which needs a video driver I could install as normal (I wipe the partition and reinstall every few months) then put it back without formatting the other partitions.

 

Actually, this might be the way to go.  Thanks for pointing my mind in the right direction.

 

EDIT: D'oh!  I have a 500gb SSD that I'm not using at the moment, with a bit of luck there'll be enough room inside to add it as an extra disk.  Even if not, I've got an enclosure casing for it (somewhere) that I could probably use as my O/S disk.

 

 Why didn't I think of that?

(Unless I'm overlooking something really obvious, please feel free to chip in.  It's late, I'm tired and my not figuring this out hours ago without becoming one of 'those kind of people' means I really am getting too old to be messing with stuff like this; I don't want to fix the screen unless there's no other option.  Doubly so as it's still under warranty so I'd invalidate that unless I take it to HP which will cost a small fortune).

Edited October 2, 2021 by Konini

[Bruno123]

Did you set it to delete the System Reserved partition and the partition on which C sits?

If you don't, the install won't proceed. If you cannot, then possibly that is why it isn't working for you

 

How did you create the USB Flash installation drive?

Edited October 3, 2021 by Bruno123

[Konini]

On 10/4/2021 at 2:39 AM, Bruno123 said:

Did you set it to delete the System Reserved partition and the partition on which C sits?

If you don't, the install won't proceed. If you cannot, then possibly that is why it isn't working for you

 

How did you create the USB Flash installation drive?

I didn't delete the system reserved partition, I'll have a go at that later, thanks for the suggestion; nothing I've read mentioned it.

 

Tried burning a ISO with autounattend from Rufus and from Media Creation tool then copied autounattend.

[Bruno123]

8 minutes ago, Konini said:

I didn't delete the system reserved partition, I'll have a go at that later, thanks for the suggestion; nothing I've read mentioned it.

 

Tried burning a ISO with autounattend from Rufus and from Media Creation tool then copied autounattend.

 

It won't work if creating via the Media Creation Tool gives you an install.esd instead of install.wim

[Rimmer]

Troll post removed

[Bruno123]

1 hour ago, Konini said:

I didn't delete the system reserved partition, I'll have a go at that later, thanks for the suggestion; nothing I've read mentioned it.

 

Tried burning a ISO with autounattend from Rufus and from Media Creation tool then copied autounattend.

You'll need to delete both, then to install to the Unallocated Space created by deleting both.