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brainstane

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  1. All, I hope somebody can help me fix a small problem I'm having with certain programs for Windows PE, such as "Salas Password Renew" and "fabs autobackup-pe" which is driving me nuts. My problem is this. The programs will launch fine but when I click on the "browse" button to select a destination (or the windows directory) the "browse for folder" window is blank and does not give me a file tree to select the destination. The window pops up as expected but there is nothing to select. I know I encountered this problem in Bart-PE aeons ago, but for the life of me cannot remember how I resolved it. Can anybody PLEASE help me resolve this, as I would like to migrate to windows PE completely and not being able to run a few of these plugins is making this migration impossible. Thank you for your suggestions, Dan
  2. Same here, I understand your point. My suggestion was merely aimed at the idea that you could run thru the manufacturers setup to get the correct mass storage driver entries within the unattend.txt file their process creates and then integrate it into your new build.
  3. With no CD to boot from your best bet of getting files/repairing this laptop is to PXE boot bart PE from the network jack. With this loaded in memory you can easily run chkdsk and map a network share to restore files if the chkdsk fails.
  4. I do this to deploy windows occasionally as well..mainly for windows 2000. Only difference being is that I kick off unattended installs from within BartPe and then ghost them from within the same session. I mainly do 2000 as hotfixes aren't really being released as frequently and are quickly picked up with windows update. Also, most drivers are already as new as they're going to get for 2K. The only disadvantage of this method (toe me) is the above. The builds become"dated" when new service packs and drivers arrive . No way to update svcpack.inf or slipsteam new fixes\drivers when they arrive without creating a new image. If the builds could somehow be "peeled apart" and new hotfixes\drivers applied it would be THE way of deploying windows...much the way that WIM files work.
  5. The easiest way I've run across to get new model server builds up and running quicky in unattended installs is to do the following: 1) Boot from the manufacturers supplied deployment kit CD and run through its setup. This typically involves entering some values (such as product key, computer name and such) as well as a cd for your flavor of windows operating system. 2) Once you are to the point in this setup where you would normally reboot the server and let the build to commence, power the server off. 3) Boot the server with BartPE and start to look at the goodies the server setup has left you. While the folder structure left on the hard drive is radically different between manufacturers, they all have to play by windows installation rules. This means you'll find a fully configured unattend.txt file of some sort with all the mass storage entries and drivers pre-packed for you. Along with this will come the post configuration software needed to finalize the server deployment. Just roll this part up into your current software installation scheme and you're goood to go. 4) decipher their build process and implement it into your existing unattended build network. (ris, winnt32.exe /unattend setups...ect. I've gotten server builds up and running within a few hours using this method for pretty much all the server hardware I've run across. We switched frome IBM to HP and the transition was pretty seamless. It's good to know the fundamentals of mass storage drivers and such but once you have that down, why look a gift horse in the mouth. The majors spend a lot of resources to put together this build process so why try to re-invent their wheel.
  6. You could try this plugin for bart (dont know how well it would work in WinPE but it writes a xp/2000/2003 compatible boot sector from a preinstall environment) http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30378 plugin is called fixmbr
  7. Is there any way you could write up a small walk through to accomplish this task? I have winpe 2.0 but am unclear on how the imagex process works (if this is indeed what you're using to perform this task) I would never ask for step by step but if you could provide a brief overview of the procecure from within PE 2.0 it would be hugely beneficial for us PE 2.0 newbies. Thanks so much in advance.
  8. There's a plugin specifically created to import ghosted images into a virtual machine. Please see this thread: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=76734
  9. Hi, I've done this in the past: Kick off an unattended install from within bartPE. Once winnt32.exe has completed and all files are copied to the hard drive, dont reboot the machine but rather create a ghost image of the hard drive prior to it restarting from within the same bartPE session. This image can then be ghosted onto other machines at a much faster rate than a straight winnt32.exe setup is from bart.
  10. I do lowercase for $oem$ and never have any problems...
  11. Hi, I've stumbled across a really neat tool to take a ghost image of an existing Server\Workstation\Laptop and turn it into a virtual machine. The process is performed using a Bart P2V plugin and is proving extremely handy to me. This is a great tool if, for example, you have a bunch of legacy boxes running in your environment that could just as easily be run in a virtual machine, freeing up or tombstoning the old dedicated hardware. You can also take a ghost of your current workstation and import it into a VM, testing changes in a non-invasive way that could otherwise bork your box. I am in no way associated with this project nor is any of the work mine, I just thought that I would share this great project as a search did not turn up any evidence of this plugin being previously posted in the forum. Here's the link to the main site where the plugins are hosted: http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?page_id=174 Basic overview of the process is this: (there's a complete guide posted on the site with more indepth info) Note: The following overview assumes that you have already created a new BartPE .ISO file which contains the plugins that the link above references. Once you have created this .ISO, continue with the following to succesfully deploy it. 1) Create a new custom virtual machine inside VMware Workstation and select "Windows XP" as the operating system type. This selection works for ghosted images that had been running either Windows 2003 or Windows XP. (I have not ghosted a W2k box yet to test that OS. The plugin does have entries for including Win2K as well as NT4.0 VMware drivers, however) 2) When you get to the portion of the creation wizard where it asks you for the drive interface, select SCSI rather than IDE 3) Choose Buslogic as the preferred driver. 4) Start the newly created virtual machine and boot the BarPE .ISO image that contains the P2V plugin as well as your imaging software (I use ghost as the authors suggest) 6) From within Bart, launch Ghost (or your imaging software) and import the image of whatever workstation (or server) that you have a "ghost" image of. 7) Reboot the virtual machine and let it BSOD once. This will assign the drive letter of C:\ to the ghosted partition. (if you check diskpart after you restore a ghost image, you'll notice that it has no drive letter. Trying to do a "sel vol 1" "assign letter=c" typically fails. This is the reason for the reboot) 8) Boot the VM back into bart from the .ISO file and run the VMware P2V plugin. Follow the instructions in the plugin to inject the correct driver\OS type. Basically you have to select the windows directory and choose to inject the LSIlogic and Buslogic SCSI drivers into the ghosted image. This will let you get past the 07B stop error that occurrs because windows doesn't natively have the VM scsi drivers necessary to boot the ghosted image. Using the above process, I've been able to import ghost images of many Dell model workstations, servers and laptops. There is also thread covering this plugin over at the VMware site, the thread can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jsp...=31448&tstart=0 Enjoy and drop by that thread to give the author a thumbs up if it proves as helpful to you as it has to me. Dan
  12. cacls C:\folder\subfolder /t /e /g "everyone":f would give "everyone" full permission to the subfolder. Make sure you enclose user groups that contain spaces (i.e domain users) in " " at the end of the command. If you want, you can also team this up with the "net share" command and create a share prior to implementing permissions. I use this to share a program installation folder: net share Apps=d:\programs\apps /grant:Everyone,full followed by the cacls command: cacls d:\programs\apps /t /e /g "domain users":f Note, the net share command above is 2003 specific. If you do not use the /grant:everyone,full it will default the share to read only. This does not happen in windows XP.
  13. You probably need to install the PCMCIA drivers from Dells website. This also happens when building Dell laptops utilizing the BTS packs.
  14. Hi Waves, This is the thread that got me going in the right direction with performing unattended network installs using bartPE. Hope it helps you too http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t13271.html
  15. You'll need to kick off the installation from within either BartPE or WinPE in order to make use of scripted diskpart commands.
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