Preparing Advanced Format hard drives for Microsoft Windows installations on HP Business Notebook PCs and desktop PCs - White Paper

This issue has been addressed in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 982018. The typical user should

apply the associated hotfix as needed; IT professionals can follow the procedure described below.

Important

The following procedure is intended for the IT professional.

Perform the following steps apply the hotfix:

1. Download the Windows PE hotfix to your c: drive from the Microsoft Support site at

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=982018&kbln=en-us.

2. Unzip the download file by double-clicking on it.

3. The Windows6.1-KB982018-x86.MSU file should appear in your c: drive. Expand this file:

a. Launch the command prompt with Administrator rights.

b. At the prompt, enter the following:

expand.exe c:\Windows6.1-KB982018-x86.MSU –f:*.* c:\

4. Select StartAll ProgramsWindows OPK or Windows AIK.

5. Right-click Deployment Tools Command Prompt and then select Run as administrator.

6. At the prompt, expand the Windows PE image by mounting boot.wim to be updated into a

location by entering the following:

imagex.exe /mountrw c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim 1

c:\winpe_x86\mount

7. Create a scratch directory:

mkdir c:\winpe_x86\sandbox

8. Apply the hotfix to your boot.wim image:

Dism.exe /image=c:\winpe_x86\mount /ScratchDir=c:\winpe_x86\sandbox

/Apply-Unattend=c:\Windows6.1-KB982018-x86.xml

9. Commit the Windows PE image by un-mounting boot.wim to be updated into a location by

entering the following:

imagex.exe /unmount /commit c:\winpe_x86\mount

Validating partition alignment

This section outlines the following options for validating partition alignment:

 Using Microsoft DiskExt (for Windows XP or later platforms)

 Using the Windows Management Information Command-line (WMIC) utility (for Windows XP or

later platforms)

 Using Diskpart (for Windows 7 platforms)

Sample calculations are also provided.