Partitioning error message at unattended Windows 10 Pro installation

[isobot]

when running an unattended Win10 installation, the installation breaks with an error message (translated from German):

Could not create a partition on storage media "0". The error occured when applying the setting <DiskConfiguration> of the answer file for the unattended installation. Error code: 0x80042565

[isobot]

error message screenshot

[gombara]

I cannot reproduce this problem. I am testing the script you have provided with some minimal changes such as ISO file location etc. Is it possible to give me the URL of the ISO file that you used? The one I use has the name Win10_21H2_EnglishInternational_x64.iso.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

You can save yourself a lot of typing effort in the script by using

VBoxManage createvm --name $vm_name --ostype Windows10_64 --default --register

This creates VM with default config, including storage controller (for Windows 10 it'll be AHCI) but without hard disk image (since you might want a different size than the default). You can of course change VM settings afterwards to your liking, like memory size and so on.

Since VirtualBox 6.1.30 you no longer need to specify options --script-template and --post-install-template, because the long standing packaging bug in the Linux deb and rpm packages has been fixed which caused the templates to be not found without those options.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Doh. What you see is actually a regression introduced in 6.1.28, and was fixed shortly after 6.1.30 was built. Suspect that's why it wasn't reproducible for gombara.

Will be fixed in 6.1.32.

If you need a quick workaround: configure the VM to use EFI. Not that it's the default config, but it avoids the bug. The partitioning failure is caused by VirtualBox creating a GPT partitioning unconditionally, not the MBR one which should be used for legacy BIOS.

[isobot]

thank you very much for the fast update. I'm going to test 6.1.32 and give you feedback afterwards.