Windows 7 iscsi install

[Lyas Spiehler]

I am chainloading gpxe through my existing pxe environment. When I attempt
to boot to an unpartitioned iscsi target, my system falls back to cd
booting, when it loads up the windows 7 enterprise install cd, and looks
fine until it actually appears to begin "copying files" during the
installation, but fails before reaching even 1% with an error message that
says, "Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error occurred
while preparing the partition selected for installation. Error code:
0x80070057" I can however load the iscsi target using windows iscsi
initiator and format the disk successfully. I've tried this with 3 different
client computers all using different nics. I've also tried this with 2
different servers. Both of them had different nics. I've used IET and TGT to
setup targets on Ubuntu and CentOS based distributions. I've used USB flash
drives, IDE drives, and SATA drives as targets. I've also installed directly
to the disks and booted to them over iscsi using gpxe, but they reboot
midway through booting with no error. I've also used different windows 7
install disks (professional and enterprise). Within each test environment, I
can perform and operation against any of my targets within disk management
after using the iscsi initiator to connect my servers, without a hitch.
(create partitions, format partitions, delete partitions, write and read to
the filesystem) I'm officially out of ideas and desperate. Any help is
greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[Vivek Subbarao]

Whats the size of your hard disk ? Are you trying to create one single
partition ?

In fact, my boot
sequence doesn't work if partitions exist because gpxe will attempt to
boot and get a "operating system missing" error and stop without ever
falling back to boot to cd

Is your CD next in the boot sequence after the iSCSI target in your BIOS
boot order ?

Also make sure that you don't have any USB pen drives plugged in during
the installation and also
Remove you local hard drives.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: 07 February 2011 01:35
To: Vivek Subbarao
Subject: Re: [Etherboot-discuss] Windows 7 iscsi install
I've tried to install with no partitions created. In fact, my boot
sequence doesn't work if partitions exist because gpxe will attempt to
boot and get a "operating system missing" error and stop without ever
falling back to boot to cd. Unless of course it was one of my attempts
of booting to a SAN with the OS already installed, in which case it
would never try to boot to cd because it would begin booting the OS on
the SAN, however, as I mentioned before, this also doesn't work
because it only reboots midway through booting.
Sent from my iPhone

Hi,
Are you installing to a raw disk or to a disk that already contains

a

partition ? If its the second one, then Windows 7 might have some
problem installing to that partition due to alignment issues. Try
installing to a raw disk.

Thank you,
Vivek S
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sat 2/5/2011 10:44 AM
Subject: [Etherboot-discuss] Windows 7 iscsi install
I am chainloading gpxe through my existing pxe environment. When I

attempt

to boot to an unpartitioned iscsi target, my system falls back to cd
booting, when it loads up the windows 7 enterprise install cd, and

looks

fine until it actually appears to begin "copying files" during the
installation, but fails before reaching even 1% with an error

message

that

says, "Windows could not format a partition on disk 0. The error

occurred

0x80070057" I can however load the iscsi target using windows iscsi
initiator and format the disk successfully. I've tried this with 3

different

client computers all using different nics. I've also tried this with

2

different servers. Both of them had different nics. I've used IET

and

TGT to

setup targets on Ubuntu and CentOS based distributions. I've used

USB

flash

drives, IDE drives, and SATA drives as targets. I've also installed

directly

to the disks and booted to them over iscsi using gpxe, but they

reboot

midway through booting with no error. I've also used different

windows 7

install disks (professional and enterprise). Within each test

environment, I

can perform and operation against any of my targets within disk

management

after using the iscsi initiator to connect my servers, without a

hitch.

(create partitions, format partitions, delete partitions, write and

read to

the filesystem) I'm officially out of ideas and desperate. Any help

is

greatly appreciated! Thank you!