ubernerd
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Posts posted by ubernerd
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To support XML you have to add the XML component using peimg
To connect to a database, add the MDAC compoment using peimg (I know it works with MS-SQL)
I have no idea if Flash will work, if I remember correctly Flash uses DirectX for accelerating graphics and this relies heavily on the graphics driver, and WinPe uses a common VGA driver so I would imagine that it will not do very well, but hey give it a try.
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Why not have your script launch wpeinit before it does whatever it has to do.
I use winpeshl.ini to launch a vb6 application that calls wpeinit before mounting and accessing network drives and stuff. Works perfectly
Oh and there is no ugly DOS boxes in my solution
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Normally my Images (500MB to 1.9 GB) deploy in between 4 and 10 minutes depending on the size (using a gb network)
This goes for both WDS and winpe/imagex deployments.
You may wanna look into your network config, as that is normally the source of speedproblems
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I have done some coding with the wimgapi.dll and there is no way you can make vb6 callbacks with the WIMMessageCallback function as VB6 uses a STA (single threaded appartment) model for all its events, and wimgapi.dll uses the MTA (multi threaded appartment) model for the callbacks.
The only solution I found was to built an ActiveX component (in native C++ code) that receives the callbacks and handles the callback as an normal ActiveX events.
I'm unable to share the code as it is part of our commerical solution, but I'll provide hint and pointers if anyone is interrested.
If anyone has another solution to this I'd like to know about it. Preferable one that does not include endless hours of C++ coding (not my strongest language)
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I agree completly, but you know customers, they sometimes just dont listen to common sense. USB and DOS is bad news IMO
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Hi all
I just got an odd question from a customer, he want to boot a PC into PXE using a USB netcard, and he wants recommendations on wath to buy.
Anyone have any experience with this, and if so can you recommend any product, preferably product which include support for DOS as well.
/ubernerd
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We managed to get it to run with 316 MB in vmware, so 384 would be the minimum for actual hardware I guess
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Didn't remove anything at all
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Mine is only 113 MB and I have added all the extras and some additional tools and stuff.
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WinPE 2.0 runs very unstable on systems with less than 316 MB memory.
We have done a lot of testing on this limit, and one of the symptoms we encountered was problems with network traffic.
Remember its built on the Vista codebase, and Vista doesn't support systems with 256 MB memory.
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Has anyone dealt with System partitions?
I have several peices of hardware that require system partitons (older hardware but we stil use it and I have to support it)
My issue is that the System partition is a hidden partition with no drive letter assigned.
ImageX can't deal with this partition like PQIDeploy or Ghost.
Has anyone been sucessful with imagaing and deploying a system partition using imageX?
I am told I have to play with it by actually making the sys partiton active and assigning a drive letter
Then Imaging it.
And when I deply it.. doing the same in reverse. Deploy as C:... then hide it and mark as non bootable.
Thats lot of work in my book....
I'm curious if anyone has tackled this yet and if they would post the code thay used.
Chris
If the datafiles on the partition is readable by Windows/WinPE, it should be possible, remember ImageX is filebased and not disk/sector based like Ghost/PQIDeploy.
It will require some scripting/coding to handle but as you have access to VBScript and WMI from WinPE, it should be fairly easy to solve this.
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WMI has a class for handling registry, and it has a method for reading binary values into an array. From there on its plain vbscript coding
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The DHCP/PXE reply that WinPE is booted from is stored in the registry
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\PXE, in this block of bytes you can find the IP address used to boot WinPE
Once you have that scan thru Win32_NetworkAdapters in WMI and find the NIC with the IP address you found in ther previous step
Get the MAC address property of the win32_NetworkAdapter and you're done.
All theses steps can be done using vbscript.
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You could disable SATA native mode in BIOS and the nyou should be able to install the driver and switch back again.
I think the method is described in a file in the driver kit ( it was for my NW8440)
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Why use Ghost when ImageX is available with WinPE?
I do a PXE boot, partition, format, apply, reboot and minisetup in under 8 minutes with WinPE and ImageX, given that, I would need a lot of very good reasons to use ghost.
All you need to do is apply your with ghost, reboot and capture the image with ImageX, then you can loose Ghost for good.
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Yes it can be done.
The trick is to build a BCD on the fly to have the harddisk boot into the WinPE wim file.
The WAIK contains a lot of the details you need, but not the exact solution.
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imagex /mountrw
peimg /prep
peimg /inf
imagex /unmount
Do not run /prep before you run /inf
and remember to use imagex with /commit /unmount to actually make changes to the wim file.
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Dont know if this will help you, but normally the process goes like this, remember the wimfile should be a working winpe which has been sealed previously.
imagex /mountrw wimfile imageindex path
peimg /inf ....
imagex /commit /unmount path
Now the drivers have been added to the wimfile
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Sounds like you need to add the correct drivers to your WinPE WIM file.
You can do this by using the peimg command, the whole thing is described in the WAIK.
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If you try to execute the HTA using an UNC path, you'll most likely get an access denied error, but if you map a drive letter to the path it will work.
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Again ... you can add the driver to the WinPE CD and you can automate the entire installation process by editing the startnet.cmd in WinPE, all of this is described in the WAIK.
If you add the LOM driver to WinPE using peimg you can boot with net support without adding an extra NIC, and you can slipstream all the required drivers, RAID and NIC etc. into your Vista installation which is run from a network share.
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Yes it does. Its a matter of what kind of BIOS your machine is using and the type of device you are using.
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You should add the LOM drivers to your WinPE wim, by mounting it and use the peimg /inf= command
You should also add the LOM drivers to the Vista image you apply onto the boxes to automate the installation of drivers for the end user.
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I've built two WinPE v1.6 ramdisk CD's, an x86 and x64 version to support my unattended server builds.
Is there anyway to modify the winnt.sif in PE to allow for the NT style boot manager, where you could pick which ISO to load into the ramdisk? It appears that winnt.sif is just a customized version of boot.ini that would normally be used in a multiboot environment for booting different OS versions from the HD. but boot.ini uses arc path for selecting the OS.
We want to send out a single CD to remote sites that would be built by connecting to the servers RILO board. Thus, nobody would actually be on site to switch discs depending on the need for a 32bit or 64bit PE environment.
-Jeff
I have made a boot menu that allowed you to select what WIM you wanted to load, just by using BCD and BCDEdit, I know for sure that it worked when booting from PXE so I guess it would work when booting from DVD also
Another thing, do you have any documentation or info on the winnt.sif format, I havn't been able to find any
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Increase Hardware Compatibility for Windows XP WIM
in Windows PE
Posted
I have used this solution for a while and it works pretty well for all systems.
Build an image for acpi single processor, and let sysprep handle the switch to multicore hal if required (I use wmi to get the number of cores on the chip).
Oh and btw this switch is actually supported by MS, the switch from the old advanced acpi to acpi single- or multiprocessor is not supported.
This will work for most current systems, but if you have any older systems that requires the old Advanced ACPI thing, you can hack the correct HAL files onto the c: drive after deploying the image and before starting minisetup, I do this as part of the process where I add the correct drivers for the model identified from the SMBIOS data.
I also kick out any references to Intelppm in the registry.
Using this principle I avoid having multiple images for a single OS, it does however require a fair amount of scripting for it to work as described.