click-click

After doing more testing, the only way I've found to Auto-Start something in the MAKE_PE3 environment is to use the [RunOnce] key. [Run] and (RunOnceEx] do not get executed during the WinPE startup. The reg keys that I set for RunOneEx are still there after the system is up, so Win7PE is ignoring them for some reason. Anyway, RunOnce works great for me and that makes things very flexible by being able to use files (RegTweaks for the active system) outside of Make_PE3. This leads me to another question for Wimb. Would it be possible to add an option to not delete and reuse the already collected files to rebuild the iso? Basically, you would be starting at the point where winre.wim is used and continue from there. This would save time copying the same Win7 files over and over again every time you do a build and you would not have to keep a live vanilla Win7 SP1 system around for that purpose. One could then make changes to PE3_add, PE3_reg, Win7_Drivers, etc. without starting from scratch. Does this make sense? Ciao....,

Wimb, THANK YOU for convincing me to give MAKE_PE3 another try. I had some problems in the way I was trying to define my reg entries. I kept getting a BSOD when I tried to set my environment variables using CurrentControlSet. I changed it to ControlSet001 and that worked. You are correct in saying that User Pinned\Start Menu is working. I was trying to add a new toolbar (Quick Launch) to the taskbar. I added a few objects to the default user Quick Launch Folder, but the folder does not show up on the taskbar. I can manually add the folder as a new toolbar when booted. As far as reg entry Run goes, I added a 2nd program called regscanner from Nirsoft and that did not autostart either. I ran Autoruns and I see three run entries. Hotswap is the only one that started. Maybe this has to do with the AutoRun=1 entry for that SW. Statbar Applet RegScanner Applet HotSwap! Applet From the plugins folder (defined like the hotswap run): [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\PE3-USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "StatBar Applet"="\"X:\\Toolbx\\Statbar.EXE\"" [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\PE3-USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run] "RegScan Applet"="\"X:\\Toolbx\\RegScanner.EXE\"" Statbar is an old VB program that still works well on a Win7 system. It works in PE too, but it takes over 1 minute to appear on the screen. I have to start it manually. All other programs start instantly. Aside from that, I'm happy with the results so far. No need to give up. If you have any ideas why entries in the Startup Folder or Run Key do let get launched, I'd be interested. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out with my PE problems. I'm starting to get a better feel for Make_PE3 now, so hopefully, I will no longer need to bother you. Again, thanks ...

Well looks like I'm going to have to give up on MAKE_PE3. I can't seem to get certain user reg entries to work. I.e Using [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\PE3-USER\ for [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]. When I check the registry after the desktop appears the Run entry is missing. Also, if I do a build with objects in the Startup Folder for the default user, those entries do not run after winpe initializes the desktop. The Quick Launch toolbar doesn't show up either. I think this has something to do with the user account. There doesn't seem to be one. Basically, I can only customize the system after it is booted. Am I missing something here or is this a limitation of MAKE_PE3?

Yes, I let driver_fix.cmd run and did not cancel it. I'll cancel and see what PENetwork does. Ciao ... Edit: Same result

Okay, MAKE_PE3 with a vanilla Win7 SP1 install as input seems to be the solution to my previous problems. IE8 is working now and I no longer get an error message opening Control Panel. One minor thing is that the Ethernet Network Icon still shows Authentication Failure (with ?) even though the Ethernet network connection is working and I am able to use the Internet. If you have an idea what that might be let me know.

I have a bootable usb drive with XP installed on it for my own recovery purposes. I need a decent 7PE iso that I can use when my friends call me for help. I will give Make_PE3 another try using a fresh installed W7 SP1 with no updates and see if that solves the problems I am seeing. Two more questions: Does MAKE_PE3.cmd do everything that MAKE_PE3.exe does? I assume the created iso file should be the same either way right? If so, I will just change the dism /set inputlocale statement in the cmd file and that will take care of the default keyboard layout for me. I guess this could be a option in the GUI if you ever decide to update it. Maybe have make_pe3 allow for additional dism commands at the end from a txt file before committing and unmounting. Ciao....

I wanted to only change the inputlocale to de-de and leave the rest as en-us. If I understand correctly, make_pe3 does not create a portable or mini win7 and will produce a pe iso that may be error prone. Is that correct? The reason I wanted to use Make_PE3 was because of the small iso size. If I use the VHD method, won't that make the iso much bigger? My goal is a small W7 recovery cd to replace my aging BartPE boot CD.

I used my live windows 7 SP1 system. which includes June Patch-Tuesday security fixes. I thought I was making a portable Win7. As far as the keyboard goes, I checked the reg entry after booting the iso and the preload key was still 409 and not 407 like in the plugin. It seems that the keyboard plugin reg entries are reset when you later run dism /set inputlocale:en-us. in Make_Pe3.exe I can change the cmd file to modify the inputlocale dism entry to de-de, but I can't do that with the exe file. I'm a bit confused now as to what you mean by portable or mini Win7. So does 7pe_x86.iso=portable Win7? Sorry for the noob questions.....

I'm still having some problems with my ISO. I did not see any sample keyboard layouts except for the one to toggle between EN and RU. I added the following .reg, but when I look at change keyboard in Region and Language, Keyboard US is there instead of Keyboard German and cmd prompt is still mapped to the en layout. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ; Keyboard Layout Default German [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\PE3-USER\Keyboard Layout] @=hex(0): [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\PE3-USER\Keyboard Layout\Preload] "1"="00000407" I got my WLAN to work, but the implementation of IE8 seems to be broken for me. When I launch IE8, I get a message saying "a problem displaying google.com caused IE to refresh the webpage using compatibility view", but nothing is displayed. If I use portablefirefox, I can view web pages without problems. When I try to use an Ethernet Connection, there's no connection and the icon shows Failed Authentication. The driver seems to be installed correctly and this usually works without problems on other boot cds that I have tried. Thanks for any pointers. Also, if there is a better place to post my questions, please let me know.

I understand that 7pe_x86.iso (without WAIK) and pe3_x86.iso (with WAIK) are made from different .wim files, but does anyone know what advantage one iso has over the other?

Yes, when I boot the iso, I can change it. What I meant was to already have this as a default in the iso. Basically, I would like to make an iso with a few customized settings etc. that would end up being the default. I need to investigate the docs and all the subdirs under \MAKE_PE3. I would assume the keyboard can be set with a reg file somewhere. BTW, can make_pe_42.exe be extracted to a root drive that does not have a system installed on it and why do you specify that it needs to be on the root? Thanks for your help .....

@wimb Hi, I'm new to MAKE_PE3 and so far this seems to be the best solution for me to create a decent Win7 recovery iso. I noticed that the Make_PE3.exe GUI has a small DPI issue if you do not use Windows standard 96DPI (I use 120DPI). There is some text truncation. If you are coding this with Autoit, this might be of interest to you: fontgui-resizing or this in general: DPIAware Since I am just starting to use this tool, I have not found all the key areas that can be customized or how to do it. My first test was just to build the iso without WAIK which was fine except that I have a German Keyboard and the windows cmd prompt uses the U.S. keyboard layout. This would be one thing I would like to change, but not sure how. Is there a way to change the keyboard layout to German?

No, it's not mandatory. install will overwrite files and abort if there would be a problem. But yes there will be files remaining from old Windows installation. With removing an old installation without formating, i see 2 problems: 1. NTFS security settings - one would need to take ownership & grant access or using a tool like xdel 2. Junctions and Symlink (and this is the thing that scares me ! ) - junctions and symlinks in Win7 are created with full path. think you have an offline win7 that has C: as normal drive letter and is now under your current running windows mounted as D: It's junctions and symlink will still point to C:, but that could be the current running windows Even Mircosofts own tools like robocopy don't handle symlinks right. It might happen that deleting an offline windows switch the drive and start deleting files/folder one the current system drive ! Fyi JFX After asking the author to add an enhancement to XDEL, he has updated it with a new parameter: --one-volume-only You no longer need to be scared. With this parm, only files on the target drive are deleted. The updated version is not on his website because he is in the process of moving files to another site, Here's the Link.

Hi JFX, I noticed for Win7 etc. WinNTSetup only allows for install.wim. I have several integrated .wim images under different names, but cannot select them without renaming the images. Did you have a specific reason for doing this? Thanks...

Hello, Is it necessary to format the target partition for a clean Win7 install with WinNTSetup? The reason I ask is because I often rebuild my Win7 system and would like to keep one of my directories without having to back it up and restore it each time I redo the system. I have not found a way to remove all other files from the system other than doing a quick format which also removes my local applications folder. I've tried taking ownership, but that does not work for everything such as the winsxs and many of the other folders. It is such a pain to remove Win7 from a partition without formatting it. If anyone knows a way to do this please let me know. WinNTSetup seems to allow setup on a previous Win7 installation, but I still see a lot of files from the old installation which may affect the new installation. Not formatting doesn't seem to be the clean way of installing. Thanks for any infos ...

@JFX - GUI upscale on higher Windows DPI settings Very nice. I wish more developers would take this into consideration when developing an application. I often use apps that don't have a clue about being DPI conform. Most of the time text gets truncated or there is overlap. It seems testing is only done using normal 96 DPI. Windows also offers 120 DPI. I don't know if the developers are too lazy to bother or if they don't know how to code it. What language do you use for codng WinNTsetup and is there a specific function for making the app compatible with different DPI settings? Thanks, will try out the new version tomorrow on an XP build.

This looks interesting. I believe the the power reg entries that I am trying to change are also protected. I need to start an install for Win7 to get the security attributes for the keys, but your idea about export/import sounds good. SetACL looks very promising and your sample does the trick. What I would like to do is restore the original permissions after replacing the .msc files. I did a list with the -bckp option, but it won''t restore the original settings. SetACL.exe -on w:\windows\system32\eventvwr.msc -ot file -actn list -bckp evwrACL "\\?\w:\windows\system32\eventvwr.msc",1,"DACL(protected+auto_inherited):S-1-5-80-956008885-3418522649-1831038044-1853292631-2271478464,full,allow,no_inheritance:Administrators,read_execute,allow,no_inheritance:SYSTEM,read_execute,allow,no_inheritance:Users,read_execute,allow,no_inheritance" I can't change the owner back to S-1-5-80-956008885-3418522649-1831038044-1853292631-2271478464 and if I try to change the Administrators permission back to read_ex, it still shows full. C:\>SetACL.exe -ot file -on "c:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.msc" -actn ace -ace "n:S-1-5-32-544;p:read_ex;s:y" INFORMATION: Processing ACL of: <\\?\c:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.msc> SetACL finished successfully. C:\>SetACL.exe -ot file -on "c:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.msc" -actn setowner -ownr "n:S-1-5-80;s:y" INFORMATION: Processing ACL of: <\\?\c:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.msc> SetACL finished successfully. C:\>SetACL.exe -ot file -on "c:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.msc" -actn setowner -ownr "n:S-1-5-80-956008885-3418522649-1831038044-1853292631-2271478464;s:y" INFORMATION: Processing ACL of: <\\?\c:\Windows\System32\eventvwr.msc> SetACL finished successfully. SetACL.exe -on w:\windows\system32\eventvwr.msc -ot file -actn list "\\?\w:\windows\system32\eventvwr.msc",1,"DACL(protected+auto_inherited):Administrators,full,allow,no_inheritance:S-1-5-80-956008885-3418522649-1831038044-1853292631-2271478464,full,allow,no_inheritance:SYSTEM,read_execute,allow,no_inheritance:Users,read_execute,allow,no_inheritance" SetACL finished successfully. I guess I haven't caught on how to correctly use SetACL yet. Thanks for any help.

After running WinNTSetup for WIndows 7 , I have some additional changes that I would like to automate. I have a question about a few problems that I encountered. Maybe someone can help resolve them. I have 5 modified *.msc files (ie. eventvwr.msc etc.) that I want to replace in system32. When I copy the files, I get Access is denied. It looks like I am missing full control to do this. I can manually change the security attributes, but would like my setup cmd to be automatic without intervention. I have a similar problem when I try to modify one of the power schemes with a .reg file. How can I elevate my privileges to avoid these errors?

Okay, I will figure out another way of doing this. I tried vboot and also ended up with 'Operating System not found' on booting after WinNTSetup. I also tried to fix this with the W7 recovery disk. Bootrec /fixmbr (okay), Bootrec /fixboot (element not found message) Bootrec /rebuildBCD (finds windows system then message element not found). The only thing that works with a .vmdk is using WinNTSetup V1 to install XP. I have not tried that with V2 though. BTW, VBootctl.exe will install drivers on 1st use and all worked fine until I rebooted. My XP system hung during the boot process and I had to to revert to my last good config. Mount/Umount and reboot worked okay on Vista though. Thanks for taking the time.

I ran WinNTSetup using the virtual disk that I formatted from a Win 7 VM. I still got a WinNTSetup bootsect error message even after selecting "Do Not update the boot Configuration". Now when I try to boot, I get Operating System not found. I'm still not there yet.

Okay, I formatted a newly created vmdk with a Win 7 VM and mounted that for WinNTSetup and now I see a green check mark for the BOOTMGR PBR. I will try your suggestion (formatted in XP) later. Did I understand you correctly that I should select "Do Not update the boot configuration" whenever using a mounted virtual disk?

I am trying to use WinNTSetup V2 to setup Win7 on a VMware virtual disk. I had a bootable Win7 already installed on that vmdk which booted fine. When I mounted that vmdk and formatted it and then ran WinNTSetup and selected that drive as the boot drive + installation drive, all three boot flags were red. Bootsect threw an error after the WinNTSetup was finished with the install.wim and the setup would not boot in the VM. I am doing all this from an XP machine and don't have any problems when using a native disk. I can prep XP on a VMware virtual disk and it boots fine, but not Win 7. If I select the left tab with the W7 vmdk as the target, I see a green NTLDR PBR If I use the right tab, the BOOTMGR PBR is red. Any ideas? Thanks

I ran a test installing Win7 with SP1 integrated and applied the majority of tweaks supplied by V2. The following tweaks did not seem to work for me: Show Take Ownership to context menu -> do not see this on any of the context menus Show Cmd.exe Icon on context menu -> only shows with shift Right-Click Disable Language Bar -> Still appears on taskbar (did not see this tweak in tweaks.au3 file) Disable System Restore -> Still enabled for drive C: (DisableSR entry not present in registry. Tried adding this entry and made no difference) I did not apply the following tweaks: Show all tray icons XP-like taskbar icons Disable Aero Transparency Disable Automatic Restart on WU Force XP Partition Mode for new partitions Disable Pagefile The rest looks good. One tweak in the tweaks.au3 (NoSecurityWarning4DownloadedFiles) is not selectable in the GUI for Win7 Thanks...

Thank you very much JFX for posting the reg file and the sample RunOnceEx tip. I am currently doing something similar using a SetupComplete.cmd that I copy to \Windows\Setup\Scripts\. This gets run immediately after Windows Setup completes before the Logon screen appears. Now, all I need to do is to figure out how to convert my winnt.sif to something I can use for Win7 to make the install less interactive. Thanks again ...

Is there a readable version of the regtweaks and how they are applied by V2? I'd like to get an idea how I could add application registry entries for preloaded software that I copy to Win7. I have the .reg entries for each application and need to apply them to both HKLM and HKCU keys. I assume all of the V2 regtweaks apply to the HKLM system and software hives only. Is that correct?