Troubleshooting Disks and Partitioning
The sections that follow describe methods for resolving BitLocker™ Drive Encryption–related problems and disk partitioning errors.
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BitLocker Drive Encryption–Related Problems
Disk Partitioning Errors
BitLocker Drive Encryption–Related Problems
Using Microsoft Deployment LTI deployment to deploy BitLocker Drive Encryption requires specific configuration for proper deployment. The following potential problems may be related to the configuration of the target computer:
USB devices, CD drives, DVD drives, or other removable media devices on the target computer that appear as multiple drive letters
Shrinking drive C on the target computer to provide sufficient unallocated disk space
Problems with Devices That Appear as Multiple Drive Letters
Some devices can appear as multiple logical drive letters, depending on how they are partitioned. In some cases, they can emulate a 1.44 megabyte (MB) floppy disk drive and a memory storage drive. Therefore, the same device may be assigned drive letters A and B for floppy disk emulation and F for the memory storage drive. By default, Microsoft Deployment scripts use the lowest drive letter (in this example, A).
Team members can override the default setting on the Specify the BitLocker recovery details page in the Windows Deployment Wizard. The Windows Deployment Wizard summary page displays a warning to inform the user which drive letter was selected to store BitLocker Drive Encryption recovery information. In addition, the BDD.log and ZTIBDE.log files record the removable media devices detected and which device was selected to store the BitLocker Drive Encryption recovery information.
Problems with Shrinking Disks
To deploy BitLocker Drive Encryption on a target computer, at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of unallocated disk space are required to create the system volume. The system volume is the volume that contains the hardware-specific files needed to load Windows computers after the basic input/output system (BIOS) has booted the platform.
The ZTIBDE.wsf script runs the Disk Preparation Tool (bdehdcfg.exe) and configures the system volume partition size to 2,000 MB by default. It is possible to customize the ZTIBDE.wsf script to change the default, if necessary. However, modifying the Microsoft Deployment scripts is not recommended.
On existing computers, shrink drive C so that the system volume can be created. Use the Diskpart tool to shrink drive C. In some instances, though, the Diskpart tool may not be able to shrink drive C sufficiently to provide 2 GB of unallocated disk space. This may be caused by fragmented disk space within drive C.
One possible solution to this problem is to defragment drive C. To do so, complete the following steps:
Run the Diskpart shrink querymax command to identify the maximum amount of disk space that can be unallocated.
If the value returned in step 1 is less than 2 GB, defragment drive C.
Run the Diskpart shrink querymax command again to verify that more than 2 GB of disk space can be unallocated.
If the value returned in step 3 is still less than 2 GB, perform one of the following tasks:
Defragment drive C multiple times to ensure that it is fully optimized.
Back up the data on drive C, delete the existing partition, create a new partition, and then restore the data to the new partition.
Disk Partitioning Errors
When team members use LTI to deploy Windows XP on some hardware, the machine halts with a stop error or stops responding while loading Mup.sys after the computer attempts to start into mini-setup. This problem occurs because Windows Vista and Windows PE version 2.0 create disk partitions differently than Windows XP does. This problem occurs only on computers that use certain BIOS firmware. The following workarounds are available to resolve this issue:
See the Microsoft Help and Support article, “You cannot install Windows XP successfully after you use Windows Vista or Windows PE 2.0 to create partitions on a hard disk,” at https://support.microsoft.com/kb/931760/en-us, which describes the problem and provides an update for Windows XP that can serve as a workaround for the issue. This problem can also occur because of a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) mismatch between the source computer and the destination computer or may be the result of a missing mass storage driver.
Add data and values to the registry of Windows PE version 2.0. These settings change how Windows PE partitions and formats the hard disk before the Windows XP image is applied. Add the following settings to the Windows PE registry to work around the issue:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VDS\ALIGNMENT]
"LessThan4GB"=dword:00000000 "Between4_8GB"=dword:00000000 "Between8_32GB"=dword:00000000 "GreaterThan32GB"=dword:00000000
Perform a simple change to the DistributionShare\Scripts\ZTIDiskpart.txt file (where DistributionShare is the name of the appropriate distribution share) that Microsoft Deployment uses. If team members change the file as follows, Windows PE partitions the drive in such a manner that there is no need for either of the above steps:
Original ZTIDiskpart.txt file:
select disk 0
clean create partition primary assign letter=c: active exit
- Modified ZTIDiskpart.txt file:
<pre IsFakePre="true" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">select disk 0
clean create partition primary align=16065 assign letter=c: active exit
The **align=16065** command solves the issue described in the Microsoft Help and Support article referenced above, because it does not create the partition in the area that the BIOS bug associated with some computer systems overrides but rather reduces the disk space by approximately 2 MB.
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