Wraith

Don't mind me. I didn't read your actual problem - I thought you were referring to the pre- and post-execute errors. Getting XPlode to run isn't something I've had a lot of experience with - most of the time I use XPlode is off a network share, after I've logged in and I feel like installing stuff manually. I'd say check the guide or follow other people's instructions.

There is no difference. I have been unable to find sufficient time to maintain the multitudes of "single-user" licenses that people purchase, so I've decided to make it free for personal use. Finding time to develop XPlode at all is hard enough.

From that logfile, there does not seem to be any problem with XPlode. The pre- and post-execute errors are just that it can't find windows with those names, so it has an error. If it's running too fast, I'm going to guess and say that the BSplayer install launches a secondary process then exits, which XPlode is unable to handle.

Well, if you can read what the subtitle said, XPlode 4 is now free. I haven't had the chance to change the site around, nor any more development recently. It doesn't look like much free time is going to be found for dev'ing XPlode after January, so I plan to try to get X5 out the door as quickly as is possible. In the meantime though, XPlode 4 is going to be free, as X5 is going to be released as a free product. So I guess if you've gotten this far, you're annoyed that I haven't told you how to get it.... *evil grin* You can download it from: http://www.voidfx.com/FX/XPlode/Download Username: Pre-X5 Password: Pre-X5 Keep in mind though, this is valid for personal use only - anybody that wishes to use it in a corporate environment will still need a license. You can email for details or clarification - I'll be updating the site with T&C at some point in the coming days. Direct linkage to XPlode will be added alongside the changes, so no need to log in.

Most times I've sysprep'ed and imaged seem to fail. Most times I've gone through textmode only and imaged seem to work. Looks like I might be going through that method - although it takes a lot longer than a pre-sysprep'ed image, it seems to work all the time. I've been busy of late so I haven't been able to follow up on the creation of the program, I get the feeling that using WIM's might be a problem though. Apparently the format in LH 5231 is different than the ones usable by the WAIK. So it looks like MS is playing around with the format, might not be a good idea to use it until it's set in stone.

XPlode allows impersonation of logging in as another user, loading their registry hive and whatnot. I personally haven't tested it on a domain, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. You'd have to test it out though.

Don't use stdio.h - it's deprecated in C++, and if you must use it, #include <cstdio>, which places all the functions within stdio.h inside the std:: namespace.

I believe it should've been "if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!"

Have you tried defining ".." in [WinntDirectories] ? Seems like it'd be the candidate for doing so, haven't tried it myself, but might be something to try. Again, with the addition of folders, couldn't we just add new entries to [sourceDisksNames] ? If someone made a batch or a small prog to automatically generate a set of source folder id's, we could use those id's to copy files from a directory structure on the CD. Again, haven't done this myself, but in this instance, I don't see any reason why it would not be possible. If anyone's done these things, care to comment?

Is anybody able to give the method a test? I've been testing in VM's and it has worked fine, but when I've gone through the method manually on a real comp, I get BSOD's on the first reboot after applying the WIM. Someone else tried it so far?

Work is still progressing, albeit slowly. It'll be a week or so before I have anything that's release-worthy. I'm in the process of writing an XML parser for XPlode, and the same parser is going to be used for this, so it needs to be done before anything else.

Okay, well I've been writing a HD partitioner/formatter... progress is going along nicely. I've dropped the thought of wrapping diskpart -- it's a lot easier to do them using normal Win32 funcs. At the moment, read support of disk and partition information is completely functional, can tell which disks exist, what partitions exist, etc. etc., and it seems like it'll be fairly trivial modifying that information in order to create stuff. I'll be working on it the next couple of days, will post new info in the near future. EDIT Looks like I might be able to fix the MBR thing too. Seems simple enough to write the NT bootloader into it. We'll see how things go... EDIT2 Creating partitions and formatting is working great. Looks fairly promising at this point in time.

Gentoo. Slackware. Hmmm, I think it might be spying on my network, because that's exactly what I'm running.

I'll update it in the next day or two. Finishing my thesis today.... after that, I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

The WIM filter driver that comes with the WAIK allows you to mount a WIM file to a directory, copy files in, edit existing files, and then commit any changes you make to the existing WIM, without having to rebuild the WIM from scratch. Can't really get any easier, can it?

I've got the boot.ini as an excluded file for WIM generation. So it, along with hiberfil.sys, pagefile.sys, "System Volume Information" are not included when building the WIM. I copy/pasted from the WAIK docs, so if you've got them lying around, you'll find the wimscript.ini listed there. In a bit over a week I'll start writing an app that handles all of this. I've got an idea in my mind of how it's going to look, hopefully it turns out that way. Think integrated diskpart gui + multiple WIM image selection etc. etc. Kinda like XPlode, but installing the OS instead of programs. And don't worry about the name. It's my company. Doesn't worry me...

mbrfix did fix it - the only "problem" now is the lack of a boot.ini. Windows still boots, just there's an error for 2 seconds at the start. As long as the partition is marked as active, and the MBR is correct, it should work fine. I never tested the diskpart + clean scenario, as getwired said, but this way seems to work. I've posted my "findings" on my site: http://www.voidfx.com/FX/Random:WIM_Installation

Or you can add the lines for all of the files you want to copy into txtsetup.sif etc. They'll allow you to add whatever files you want, copy them wherever, and textmode will copy it all for you in the main file copying stage. The only problem is that you need to specify each file manually.

Unless there's something i've missed, they don't do MBR. Feel free to correct me though, I'd prefer to be using apps that are already existing on the windows distribution.

Okay, well sysprep works fine... just need to figure out how to insert the boot record / MBR, and it should be fine. fixboot/fixmbr on the recovery console fix them up, and it actually boots, but I can't seem to find anything that does them from within WinPE... Anybody know of any? EDIT: Never mind. Found a possible one. Testing it now.

Because I was under the impression that by using a sysprep'ed image you are unable to install it on a machine with a different HAL. Although, having said that, I suppose it's not terribly difficult to put two different images in, one for uniproc, one for multiproc. I guess I'll have a fiddle.

Okay, well I've been doing a bit of research on this matter... completely bypassing textmode setup does indeed seem possible, if you create the WIM directly after finishing textmode. If the WIM is created before GUI setup starts, the whole thing is compressed to less than 400MB, and the WIM can be applied in just under 4 minutes. Which in my case is quite a bit faster than textmode. I'm thinking that one could format and whatnot from WinPE, apply the WIM, reboot directly into GUI setup. I'll be writing a full frontend for the whole installation once I can get the whole process tested and downpat. At the moment I think there's a problem with boot records and whatnot. I've posted some initial findings here: http://www.voidfx.com/FX/Random:WIM_Installation and I'll be updating them during the process. If you want to test it out for yourself, let me know if you find out anything new.

Quite obviously it's been done before, I was asking more to the point of whether someone had tried using it off a CD under WinPE to install an OS. Nothing more, nothing less.

Has anybody attempted to use the WIM file management stuff from the WAIK (SMS has it too, I've been told), and used it in order to "bundle" up the OS's? I know the drivers and apps for mounting WIM files work under XP, so I'm guessing that the drivers will work under WinPE. Perhaps someone could write a tool, generating a different WIM file for each version of windows, with a frontend that handles disk formatting and whatnot... I'm guessing that someone is going to be me... I'll be working on my thesis for the next month, but I'll tackle it if nobody else has done so. Anybody have any other ideas?

Just thought I'd let you people know, if you don't already, that I've updated the site. It's been moved from the subdomain to my www.* domain, makes stuff easier for me to maintain. http://www.voidfx.com/FX/XPlode:Information I've also added PayPal payment links for people to use - your accounts won't be created instantly, but it's quicker than having to wait for a response on data that I need. Post bugs or whatnot with the interface - I wrote it in a day so I'm sure there are bugs that I've missed.