mallen

Thanks for your pointers - I've just realised I've included the winsxs files from a XP SP3 build, when my PE image is Vista. That's bound to cause some problems. My build PC is Windows 7, but the files I've been including were lifted from a fully built target PC. I'll prep a Vista x86 PC to lift the winsxs files from and try that (matches the PE spec). I've been adding them into the PE source before I prep the image. If that still doesn't work I'll try the ProcMon route. Basically I'm using Vista PE to deploy XP and want to use SQLCMD to log pre-installation steps into a remote database to report progress. Thanks for all your help so far - some useful pointers as to where I'm going wrong. If I eventually manage to get it working I'll post the required changes. Thanks

Hi, I have the following packages installed: Lang | Version | Ins | Name ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- en-US |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-MDAC-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-MDAC-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- en-US |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-Scripting-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-Scripting-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- en-US |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-WMI-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-WMI-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- en-US |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-XML-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | + | WinPE-XML-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-FontSupport-JA-JP-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-FontSupport-KO-KR-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-FontSupport-ZH-CN-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-FontSupport-ZH-HK-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-FontSupport-ZH-TW-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- en-US |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-HTA-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- |6.0.6000.16386 | - | WinPE-HTA-Package ------+---------------+-----+----------------------------------------------- I have also tried manually adding the VC runtime to the Windows\Winsxs folders, but still can't make it work. Looking through using depends.exe it looks like I have all the dependencies in place, but I still receive the following error: The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log for more detail. Thanks

It's been a while since I looked at PE, but I can't seem to find anything on this. I'm trying to use sqlcmd within WinPE (2.0) to run simple insert statements into a remote database. I have added sqlcmd.exe, sqlcmd.rll and batchparser90.dll into my image, but when I call sqlcmd I receive a side-by-side error. Any ideas anyone? Thanks in advance.

Hi, No luck I'm afraid. I even logged a premier support call with Microsoft who came back and advised it couldn't be done in the viewer. The suggestion was to write our own viewer using the .net document viewer control (sorry, don't recall exactly what the control was called). We didn't have time to do that so ended up not using xps as our document format. We've since had a similar 'restriction' to work around and I was introduced to a toolset called 'Detours'. It can intercept calls to applications and 'tinker' or rewrite with the calls. It may be possible to use this in some way to call the viewer with the options hidden, but I'm not sure as it's quite different to what we used it for. It would depend if the property could be set. Anyway, might be worth a look, http://research.microsoft.com/sn/detours/. Sorry I can't be of more help.

zorphnog, Thanks for the suggestion. Indeed I don't think that is the issue. I've now discovered that chkdsk (while windows is running, not PE), shows a problem with $Bitmap, and when I do an offline defrag (in PE), the defragmenter can't move that file. What is interesting is the position that file is located looks to be the same position I can shrink the disk to. Looks like diskpart querymax is seeing the 19GB, but can't shrink beyond this file which is located at the 9500MB from the end of the disk, the point that I can shrink to. I suspect there is something corrupt with this file. I've tried chkdsk /f in the OS, and rebooting, but then the issue reappears. I've read a few things around defragmenting the MFT to fix this. Does anyone know of an MS / or freeware tool that uses the MS API, tool that will do this? Thanks

This time I tried a smaller shrink amount. Results as follows: diskpart shrink querymax - returns 19GB diskpart shrink desired=12000 - fails, "parameter is incorrect" diskpart shrink desired=9500 - WORKS! Has anyone else come across the diskpart querymax saying one thing and the shrink operation seeing something different?

OK, I've tried a few more things. Booted up from a PE 2.0 disc into RAM (boot the wim from the CD into RAM), then run chkdsk /X. I get a similar error: Cannot lock current drive. Windows cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected. I have tried creating files on the disk and it is most certainly not write protected, however, something seems to be holding on to the volume. Any suggestions anyone?

I see where you're coming from - I had a similar problem when I wanted to use diskpart to change the drive letter of the CDROM drive. I couldn't guarantee which volume it would be. In the end I put together a short VBS script. Use a script to identify which drive it is you want to change. Remember you can use drive letters when specifying the volume in diskpart. With the same vbs script, write out a diskpart.txt script that is specific to that machine, then use the method mentioned above to call it. Here is how I managed to get this working for a cdrom: Set FileSystemObject = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set CDRoms = FileSystemObject.Drives Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WScript.shell") Dim DVDDriveLetter For Each CDDrive in CDRoms If CDDrive.drivetype = "4" Then DVDDriveLetter = CDDrive.driveletter End If Next Set objTextStream = FileSystemObject.OpenTextFile("C:\diskpart.txt", 2, True) objTextStream.WriteLine "SELECT VOLUME " & DVDDriveLetter objTextStream.WriteLine "ASSIGN LETTER=Z" objTextStream.WriteLine "EXIT" objTextStream.Close Set CDRoms = nothing Set FileSystemObject = nothing set wshshell = nothing You could use a similar method to check for a file you know is on the disk you want to change.

OK, I'm struggling to understand where this one is going wrong. I'm using WinPE 2.0, booting it into a ramdisk from a wim, so that the C drive of the system is not locked. I then use diskpart to shrink the C partition down. In about 80% of cases this works perfectly, however I occasionally get the error: DiskPart has encountered an error: Access is denied. See the System Event Log for more information. I have modified my script so that a chkdsk, and defrag are performed before I try and shrink the partition. I have also used the querymax option in diskpart which reports the maximum I can shrink by is 19GB. I am attempting to shrink by 12GB (desired), with a minimum of 11.8GB. Any ideas anyone? Thanks

I'm trying to lock down the xps viewer to use on a kiosk, so that the bar at the top that shows the 'Save Copy As' option is hidden. Has anyone had any success with controlling the toolbar options, perhaps with registry keys or something? I need to hide this option so the user has no access to the operating system. Thanks in advance.

Does anyone know how to set up a RAM disk in Vista? I have a system build image which I've scripted that combines sysprepped images into wim files, and creates the Vista PE boot environments. It's incredibly disk intensive and I'd like to push the whole lot up into RAM. I could copy all of the files into RAM once a day, make the changes I need to and recompile the image from there. I've currently got the files spread over different U320 SCSI disks and it's still too slow, so a RAM disk would be ideal. RAM is not an issue, system supports up to 32GB. So far I've only seen Ramdisks working around the 200Mb size, I'm looking for something around 2 or 3 GB, at least. Any ideas anyone?

I've tried looking in the registry and it is only stored there if you use wireless software for particular cards. Using windows wireless zero configuration doesn't seem to put anything in the registry. I did a bit of digging and found this article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default....ardsettings.asp I believe the best way to add the settings is to create a custom app that uses the WPS (wireless provisioning service) to add the settings from an xml file. I think you can create the xml file using the wizard that saves settings to a usb key, then pinch it off there. All of this is only available in XPSP2 or W2KSP1.

I might be missing something really obvious here, but how can I go about adding a wireless network and configuring the WEP keys in an unattended manner? I need to be able to do this in an unattended installation of Windows XP Pro SP2, Server 2003 SP1, and XP Embedded SP2. Any ideas anyone? Thanks!

I've managed to get the Ramdisk booting working using remote boot service from XP embedded, and a PE created from the 2003 SP1 RC. One problem I have encountered is that diskpart does not run. I think this is something to do with the registry entries created as I'm using PE1.5 (XPSP2) to create it using the /nover switch against a 2003SP1 source. Anyone got any ideas where I'm going wrong with this? Even better, does anyone know where I can get hold of a copy of the WinPE 2005 OPK CD, or even how I can register on the beta program? Thanks, M

I managed to get this working yesterday using dicht's method. Make sure you use FAT16 as the file system on the usb key. Use the HP tool (which is available as a download on their website listed under most of their new PCs drivers). That makes the partition active. Copy all of your working PE cd to the USB key. Copy ntdetect.com from the i386 dir into the root dir on the key, and copy setupldr.bin from the i386 dir to ntldr in the root dir too (no extension on ntldr file). Rename i386 to minint and it should boot.