[Registry import in setupcomplete.cmd does not work]

Works fine also using "reg.exe import" (example):

SetupComplete.cmd

@echo offREG ADD HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceExSET KEY=HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceExREG ADD %KEY%\005 /V 1 /D "reg import "%SystemDrive%\Install\Tweaks.reg""exit

This would be more genteel if you want to have a variable anyway

@echo offSET KEY=HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceExREG ADD %KEY%REG ADD %KEY%\005 /V 1 /D "reg import "%SystemDrive%\Install\Tweaks.reg""exit

[Registry import in setupcomplete.cmd does not work]

I solved it by loading the default user registry:

reg load HKU\LoadedDefaultUser "%SystemDrive%\Users\Default\ntuser.dat":: Apply common HKCU tweaks to the default accountREGEDIT /S %SystemDrive%\Install\user_regtweaks_common.reg:: Unload registry hivereg unload HKU\LoadedDefaultUser

I thought that HKCU pointed to that hive, but I was wrong.

Hey darks0ul...

look to the thread @ mydigitallife again.... i just was there and now i found this thread xD

But you should have menioned, that the keys in the regfile have to be adapted to the hive

from

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\BLABLA

to

HKU\LoadedDefaultUser\BLABLA

Cheers, Schiiwa

[XPx86 & Win7x64 UEFI Dual Boot on SSD]

...

Of course the "Secure boot" Microsoft made "compulsory" is not "secure" and in some cases it is not even "boot".

...

That made my "Day"!

[Delete Account]

The best thing is to just not post anymore. Log out and delete the MSFN cookies and its like you aren't here anymore.

[Can't access repair my PC option via F8 startup]

I have here an Acer Aspire 5720G from another Girlfriend.

I was able to boot to WinRE, but there where just the Standard-Options (no Recovery-Option)! ALT+F10 didn't do its job. To WinRE i bootet with F8-->Repair Computer. In the Root of the PQSERVICE-Partition (X:) there was a D2D32.EXE but i wasn't sure if this EXE should be executet through a routine (with switches for example)!

So I went to RYTOOLS-DIR and restored the Factory-MBR with the following command:

MBRWRWIN INSTALL RTMBR.BIN

Now ALT+F10 works fine again and eRecovery will be shown

Cheers.... Schiiwa

EDIT:

[Win 7 Security]

TL;DR: There's no need to disable or tweak services to be secure now.

Good to know.... thx a lot

[Unable to Install?]

You are saying that setup does not recognize your HDD? Are you using IDE/SATA/AHCI in BIOS?

For sure its a driver-issue... adding your driver should solve this issue... these drivers can usually be found on the manufacturer-dvd/cd/floppy or on the web-page of the controler/mainboard....

Cheers... Schiiwa

[Win 7 Security]

Maybe it is not the intension of the creator of this thread, but in my opinion, it would be fitting in here, which services does open ports and accordingly have influence to the security? Or isn't it nessessary in windows 7 to disable services to be on the secure side? I know that there might be problems when disabling services... Sometimes the problems occur much later, for example when installing a new programm; thats why i didn't mess around yet! XP disabled a lot of its services with SP2/SP3...

Cheers, Schiiwa

[Editing Startnet.cmd]

You also have to load wimfltr with following command to use imagex within a pe:

rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection DefaultInstall 132 path-to-wimfltr\wimfltr.inf

[laptop hardrive, not showing in bios]

I would try to plug it into another machine... so u can definatly see, if the reason is the notebook or hdd! If the problem is the notebook, u could try a bios-update! And like tripredacus said, u could look for raid/ahci/ide-settings, but i don't think that there is the issue! On SATA-drives, there is no jumper for PRI/SEC, but maybe to adjust sata 1.5gb/sec...

Maybe the HDD's never show up in the normal BIOS on this peticular notebook (and just in the RAID-BIOS), and u just need to include the SATA/AHCI-drivers ... which version do u try to install? Is SP1 already integrated?

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

1. It was marked active during install/deployment. Basically how the recovery partition works is that it is hidden. If you want to boot into it, you need to send a command that unhides it and sets it as the first boot volume. The trick is that after doing your work in WinRE, that a script or program runs to hide the partition again. ID changes to partitions do not take immediate effect, as the BIOS only reads the partition IDs during POST.

Just verified the partitions on the particular Windows 7-pc ... and this is the detail of the 1st partition taken with diskpart within Windows..

Partition 1

Typ : 27

Versteckt: Ja

Aktiv : Ja

Offset in Byte: 1048576

Volume ### Bst Bezeichnung DS Typ Größe Status Info

---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------

* Volume 3 Recovery NTFS Partition 14 GB Fehlerfre Versteck

Now I also remembered, that I set it active when creating it. It got ID27 and was set active before I installed Windows 7!!!

2. If you want a scenario where you have:

- System Reserved (active)

- WinRE (hidden)

- Blank partition

You will need some sort of BIOS level software to handle unhiding the partition and allow booting into it, since Windows isn't there to handle the boot request. I used the MBR.EXE program from Terabyte Unlimited in this old project:

• this cannot be 100% true, because when i format OS-Partition, it also boots to winre without any windows-tools! Just when i remove the partition, winre is un/inaccessable... Why is windows that stupid!!!
  
• I just removed the OS-partition for testing...
  
• Taking the MBR.EXE won't help me, as the WinRE is already the active partition!
  

Maybe I'm gonna try this partitioning or alternatively this one:

- WinRE (hidden)

- System Reserved (active)

- Windows

Additional: Yes well the public MS documentation is hard to figure out sometimes I'd agree. Basically it is telling you it can't be hidden because if it is, you won't be able to capture it with the supported tools. Sector based imaging software such as Acronis or Ghost can because they don't care if it is hidden or not.

Of course this was related to imagex. Did you try that already. I could imagine that it works also with ID27 to capture or apply an image on or from an ID27-partition *not verified*

EDIT:

The attachment is the DISKPART script i used for the last configuration! Really strange that BOOTMGR or BCD insist on the Windows-partition and deny if not presend°

CreatePartitions.txt

[Boot Windows 7 from VHD - an amazing concept]

Does anyone know if it is possible to boot the VHD, which comes along with the XP-Mode??? Would be a nice feature to boot XP this way without installing it from CD! I'm not able to test this right now...

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

Vista and 7 used slightly different boot methods to get to their WinRE. I find this great because Vista was a pain to do compared to 7.

You already mentioned this at least 2 times, but i know that already, as the first experimentations happened under Vista, now i try to understand 7's

Anyways, the System Reserved partition may not be 100% required, but since creating it with a recovery partition is required (for support purposes) I never tried to deploy it without one. But yes, the SR partition is marked as active. The order should be:

1. System Reserved

2. Recovery

3. Windows

Maybe i will try this layout and hope to be able to boot to win-r.e. without windows!

The reason why it boots into Windows and not WinRE each time is because the WinRE partition is marked as a hidden boot volume. So in this case, the BIOS of a computer picks the first available boot volume, the one with Windows on it because it can't see the WinRE partition.

The reason to put the recovery partition first, or the service partition even back in XP days at the beginning of the disk did have some sort of reason for it. I forgot it by now. But you can definately have a recovery partition after the OS volume, for example I always installed the SoftThinks recovery partition (for XP) at the end of the disk just because it was easier to do, and they didn't seem to care what partition it was when dealing with support issues.

It would appear that none of my Microsoft documentation talks about the relevance of the location of the recovery partition.

I know that is possible, because i created successful a Recovery as the 4th partition (behind 1system-res.,2nd windows, 3rd data)... But i wanted to have no access to it to prevent it from viruses or incompetent access (remember, this PC is for my lil' brother) I now remember, that the location at the beginning is always mentioned in relation with the ID27-partition! When i tryed to give the ID27 to this 4th partition, my problem was, that i recaptured the Winre.wim, which wasn´t bootable. This created the failture at booting, but i thought the id27 is the problem...

Question1: (don´t think this will work)

Gremo used the 1st partition as active as u can see here:

Is ist possible to set it active without booting in loops to winre?? Or is it just active because he booted to winre (thats what i expect, as he start with: "I'm booting into WinRE from and hidden partition."

Question2: (should work because the new active part. would be the Sys.-Res. and not the windows one!?)

Do you think when i use your suggestion to include a Sys.-Res.-Partition, will it be bootable without Windows-Partition and WITHOUT winpe to set it active manually?

Additional:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766149%28WS.10%29.aspx

There it says: "To back up and to restore the Windows RE partition, the partition must not be hidden."

so i should set the ID to 7 before capturing or applying the recovery-partition-image?? (i want to include this, to do the recovery from DVD in case of HDD-replacement)

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

I recovered the deleted Partition with Testdisk just to see the behaviour on some other event... I tryed a few things, for example renaming the Windows-dir to BLA... and the automatic-windows-repair did not renamed it back to Windows, instead it adapted the BCD-entries to the BLA-dir. Good job windows-guyz... whats so difficult to search for a file or in the registry, where windows was installed

But it booted to windows anyway, but nearly no services been available... Renamed it, after a funny windows-boot ...

Anyway, this all doesn't matter to my question:

If used as intended, the recovery partition is hidden by default. It can only be made active by selecting the option in the Windows boot menu. If you have removed Windows, you can't access the boot menu to do this. You'd need to boot into a PE of some sort and use diskpart to unhide and make the recovery partition active.

This is another strange thing to me! Why should the WinRE-partition be the first? I 've read, that the main for this reason is, that there is the possibility to boot to winre, even if the OS-Partition gets corrupt! But why the h... won't it boot without Windows. All this could be simplyfied if the WinRE-Partition would ALWAYS be the active one!?? Isn't it the Case, that normaly the 100MB-partition is the active one?

I have 3 partitions at the moment:

• 1st WinRE
  
• 2nd Windows
  

Do i have to use 3 to make that work:

• 1st WinRE
  
• 2nd System-Reserved
  
• 3rd Windows??????
  

I ask because i think to remember that the System-Reserved is the Active one, isn't it?

Slowly i begin to understand why u guys don't use the Windows recovery B)

So i could have left the Recovery-Partition as the 4th one without ANY disadvantages!!

P.S.:

I have no access to the PC right now, but ...

i'm sitting in front of a Vista-notebook, which has also a WinRE... I looked at the details of partition1(winre), and as u said, it is not the active one. But strangly here there are 2 BCDs, one on the Windows, and another one on the WinRE. The Mini-desktop with Windows 7 has just one on the recovery-partition!

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

Hey guyz!

Can't unterstand that as well. Maybe you used the reagent of the pre-SP1-Windows (7600). Mine always created the Guid-dir as subdir (7601).

I now am using the first partition as boot/recovery-partition. Second is windows. Why does the system not want to boot, when deleting the second one?

P.S.: The BOOT\BCD is stored on PARTITION1 (Windows did this when starting setup!)

[Read ini file using batch]

Have a look here:

http://ss64.com/

I guess it could be useful

[Read ini file using batch]

.....delims==HERE_NO_SPACE"

Set inifile=folderstore.ini
Set txt1=%~n011.txt
type %inifile% | find "Cabfolder1=">%txt1%
:: Note: Current script able to work with space
FOR /F "tokens=2 eol=; delims==" %%i in (%txt1%) do (set value1=%%i)
if not defined VALUE1 (color 1A && echo Folder path not defined.) else (Echo %value1% ^<---is the preset folder.)
echo.
del %txt1%
pause

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

I can't do a recovery test on this system because I need it for other things atm.

You don´t have to

I wonder if that BCD Id ever changes after a recovery... but its obvious that Sysprep makes some changes once it goes into oobeSystem pass.

I found spoted that a disabled reagentc resets the BCD-ID to 000.....(in reagent.xml). I deleted the whole BCD and did a reset of my startupfiles with these:

bootsect /mbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /rebuild bcd

TWICE

The first time, everything went fine and I could re-enable it, because when I did the reset, the reagent was disabled. Btw. REAGENT also builds the nessassary BCD-entries for Rec.-Env.!!!

The second time i obviously did the reset with enabled reagent, so the ID in reagent.xml couldn't find the ID in my BCD. It was also strange to me, that the rec.-env. entries didn't appear again in the BCD without creating them manually. I created them, but with another ID, so reagent still couldn't find the ID from the xml :rolleyes:

Now, everything is discovered, also with the RecoveryOperation-parameter, you are right. So stupid that i interpreted it as the count, because i did 4 recoveries, when i looked in reagent.xml the first time

Thx for the standby .... Schiiwa

Also I don't like reagent very much, because it puts the winre.wim in this nasty GUID-subdir Just use it, to have the bootkey-option, because it uses 2 lines in BCD and i don't know how to create it manually!

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

It's no problem to create the nessessary entries to force the system being able to boot to winre! But I want to make REAGENTC.EXE able to work!

Solved it right now.... Had to replace

C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\Reagent.xml

with

C:\Windows\Winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-winre-recoveryagent_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_16c18f8b899480af\Reagent.xml

then it worked again.

The problem was, that in my reagent.xml was the old ID. If i've set it to 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, i've probably been able to enable it.

but i can't set back the "already made recoveries" to 0! REAGENTC /INFO still says Wiederherstellungsvorgang: 4! Any other value can be changed through ReAgent.xml (for example <OemTool state="0"/>, wich will have affect on the output of "reagentc /info")

If i set <ScheduledOperation state="4"/> to 0, reagent won´t accept it (doesn´t matter whether i do that with enabled or disagled reagent) and if i disable or enable it, it is set to 4 again

So how can i set it back again to 0? it's not dokumented anywere and i'm pretty sure, that reagentc /info doesn't take this Information from BCD

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

It gets the information from the BCD. If you type BCDEdit into your command prompt, you will see the data. Here is an example I had from previous troubleshooting.

You don´t have to show me, how the BCD looks like with or without RE-Entry

And i have to disagree:

Z:\Recovery>bcdedit /enum all /v

Windows-Start-Manager

---------------------

Bezeichner {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}

device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1

path \bootmgr

description Windows Boot Manager

locale de-DE

default {a672b693-fd5c-11e0-8c9e-c1e0787e44b5}

resumeobject {8c379756-fd54-11e0-a85f-806e6f6e6963}

displayorder {a672b693-fd5c-11e0-8c9e-c1e0787e44b5}

timeout 30

Windows-Startladeprogramm

-------------------------

Bezeichner {a672b693-fd5c-11e0-8c9e-c1e0787e44b5}

device partition=C:

path \Windows\system32\winload.exe

description Windows 7 Ultimate

locale de-DE

inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}

recoverysequence {a672b694-fd5c-11e0-8c9e-c1e0787e44b5}

recoveryenabled Yes

osdevice partition=C:

systemroot \Windows

resumeobject {8c379756-fd54-11e0-a85f-806e6f6e6963}

Windows-Startladeprogramm

-------------------------

Bezeichner {a672b694-fd5c-11e0-8c9e-c1e0787e44b5}

device ramdisk=[Z:]\Recovery\winre\Winre.wim,{ae5534e0-a924-466c-b836-758539a3ee3a}

path \Windows\System32\Winload.exe

description Windows Recovery Environment

inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}

osdevice ramdisk=[Z:]\Recovery\winre\Winre.wim,{ae5534e0-a924-466c-b836-758539a3ee3a}

systemroot \Windows

nx OptIn

detecthal Yes

winpe Yes

Wiederaufnahme aus dem Ruhezustand

----------------------------------

Bezeichner {8c379756-fd54-11e0-a85f-806e6f6e6963}

device partition=C:

path \Windows\system32\winresume.exe

description Windows 7 Ultimate

locale de-DE

inherit {1afa9c49-16ab-4a5c-901b-212802da9460}

filedevice partition=C:

filepath \hiberfil.sys

debugoptionenabled No

Windows-Speichertestprogramm

----------------------------

Bezeichner {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}

device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1

path \boot\memtest.exe

description Windows Memory Diagnostic

locale de-DE

Optionen zum RAM-Datenträgersetup

---------------------------------

Bezeichner {ae5534e0-a924-466c-b836-758539a3ee3a}

description Ramdisk Options

ramdisksdidevice partition=Z:

ramdisksdipath \Recovery\Boot\Boot.sdi

Now search this id....

fbf3595f-fce2-11e0-811f-a6936763aab2

and tell me where to find it

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

What version of Windows 7 are you using?

Windows 7 x64 SP1 (with all updates)

Yea... I ran it from windows also and it returns the following:

C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /info
Erweiterte Konfiguration für die Wiederherstellungsumgebung

    Windows RE aktiviert:        1
    Windows RE bereitgestellt:         1
    Setup aktiviert:        1
    Benutzerdefiniertes Wiederherstellungstool: 1
    WinRE.WIM-Verzeichnis:
    Wiederherstellungsumgebung:
    BCD-ID:               fbf3595f-fce2-11e0-811f-a6936763aab2
    Setupdateien:
    Wiederherstellungsvorgang:   4
    Vorgangsparameter:
    Boot Startschlüssel-Abfragecode    0x8500
REAGENTC.EXE: Vorgang erfolgreich ausgeführt

But where does it get the information from?? If i change any value in any ReAgent.xml....

C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml
C:\Recovery\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml
Z:\Recovery\System32\Recovery\ReAgent.xml

It does not change the output of this command mentioned above! Here is some more output:

C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /enable
REAGENTC.EXE: Vorgang fehlgeschlagen: 57

C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /disable
REAGENTC.EXE: Vorgang fehlgeschlagen: 2
Das System kann die angegebene Datei nicht finden.

C:\Windows\system32>reagentc /setreimage /path Z:\Recovery\Winre\Winre.wim /target C:\Windows
REAGENTC.EXE: Vorgang fehlgeschlagen: b7
Eine Datei kann nicht erstellt werden, wenn sie bereits vorhanden ist.

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

OK.... i didn't understand the /unattend-switch for sysprep till now

But want to use my EXE-->HTA-->CMD anyway....

Worked fine and had 4 successful recoverys in my test-procedure, yet !

But now ReAgent makes trouble and do not want to run! Can´t ENABLE/DISABLE/SET-A-SETTING. Also the suddenly appearing directory:

Z:\Recovery\System32\Recovery

Confuses me. It Contains the ReAgent.xml, which is normaly located at C:\Windows\System32\Recovery! But If I change any value in any of any ReAgent.xml, it doesn´t have affect on the output of:

"Re-Agentc.exe /info"

So where does ReAgentC.exe get the information which u can see with added /INFO - parameter?

I can´t exacly say, what caused this behaviour. Maybe the ID=27 was no good idea, as the partition is not in front of the system's one. I've read all the documentations month ago, but I wanted to force a hidden recovery-partition Or maybe the fact, that I didn´t compress my WinRE-Image, which had over 500 MB, caused the problem. I think to remember that there is a limitation of the size of winre.wim. But I was on good spirits as everything went just perfectly, that I've had no doubts to change a few things at a time. Of course THEN the DOOM was happening (Maybe it's important to say, that I DIDN´T RUN THE RECOVERY at this time!!

This is what I certainly did before:

- exchanged the WinRE.wim
- removed the letter and set ID to 27 (on partition 4 )

I have the reasonable suspicion, that I can´t avoid a Re-Install

[Installing WinRE to hard disk]

Im asking myself if it would have been possible to install the WIM with windows-setup (without answer-file), if I had set a /FLAG when i took the capture!???

Maybe anyone knows

Bye and have a nice week-end!

[Username missing]

For all the other members and visitors with user-related problems:

...You can even change the the user-account in Windows XP Home...

You should have read this before. That makes it much more easier to follow the thread

[Username missing]

OK, the FOR or a @ has to be there... just forgot it.