Daemonforce

I've been looking around for a tool that can get WinPE to function as if it had temporary write access to disc. Identical to that of a Knoppix release. From what I've found, ramdisk is effective for making virtual drives and editing the setup information to make the PE disc a virtual directory sounds a bit iffy. Is there any way to accomplish what I'm trying to do or is this why everyone is using ramdisk?

To the average programmer, it rarely does. This is exactly why I haven't been able to build a PE off of XP quite yet. Everything else has been simple. I currently have the Windows XP OPK. The tools in the OPK are what I have used between XP and Server 2003. 8/4/2004 4:00 AM I would say that's a given. I avoid them. ^-^' I have had it work before....ONCE. O_o I can't remember what I did in September but I'm sure some documentation in this forum has something to do with it. It's time for me to start digging. I'm messing with 4051PE just because I can. It has a few exploits that are worth messing with but I'm dropping it because it's primarily just a lot of broken code. I'm done playing with it. The way 4051PE is built is sort of a pattern I'm trying to follow when making other PEs. 5219PE is going to be using this method when I get around to it. Uber new hax or intermittent crashes?...We'll see how it turns out. But before I do anything with it, I'm going to see if I can still do stuff to the XP OPK. It's my only resource for XPPE right now and I'm going to take another shot at modifying it. I know I had it working once before, I wonder what I did wrong.

I'll leave it at that since I have a few ideas why...lol Waffle status: Roffled. But why does it function like a piece of crap?! It's a straight up rip of VRMPVOL_EN right? Windows. Really....That's it. =/ Aside from Nero to burn an image and vmware to test...That's all. 0.0 Well that's good to know. Right now I'm fixing a seriously broken build(4051) of Windows. Explorer doesn't function right, taskbar doesn't show...task manager doesn't like to show when pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc...Maybe I should just move straight to Vista and recognize problems there... Anyway there is one critical thing I notice in XP/03 vs. LH: VGA driver sucks. What is the bootvid process that XP goes through and why is it so much better than anything stamped with NT6?

I've been looking around the forums and my toolkit and it appears that Microsoft's build of WinPE (WinXP SP2) is nothing more than a proprietary piece of crap. 4051PE functions better than this! WTF?! O_o I have experience with the following PE's made from: Windows XP Pro SP1 Windows XP Pro SP2 Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 SP1 Windows LH Pro 4051 (i386 exploit) Windows LH Pro 4074 (i386 exploit) I've had experience with the following BartPE builds: Windows XP Pro SP2 Windows .NET Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 SP1 Windows LH Pro 4051 I look back on builds from NT to 2000 needless to say that I'm not even going to bother with them. I can't get my Windows XP builds to accept an installation within a Windows environment right now, so building a PE from XP is out. I've only gotten MCE to do that and it doesn't look like anything that can work so I drop it. I'm trying my best to stay away from BartPE since it's about as bad as the XP OPK. The OPK has to be the worst piece of crap that I've ever messed with. If I try to alter the registry settings or try running a program the whole OS just craps out. Not even a bluescreen/greenscreen just instant crash. I look at the way LH builds a PE and the directories/files listed with this method would probably work with XP, 03 and possibly the Vista beta. My only issue with it is that nothing after Server 2003 has had a PE that supports more than 16 colors. Is there any way around this? Is there any way to build an XP PE using Longhorn's directory style? Don't tell me I'm the only one here that has ever thought of this. I say it's feasible to build a PE from Windows XP that works. It can be extracted from Longhorn and Vista beta 1, so how can it be extracted from a previous operating system?

If it exists for your hardware then you can add it. *pokes entire driver archive* *adds files to the manifest* Yup....It's gonna be a looooooooooong day.

Tell that to current software vendors like vmware. O_o Like I say...I bolt things into WinPE. That's a bigger difference than anything else I've seen when someone else gets a copy of it. Half the people don't even bother messing with the registry settings....A lot of you are no fun at all. o_O

I have WinPE but I find it to be a pain in the a**. I've always been oriented towards LonghornPE more than anything else. It's just the shell that always holds me back. If anything I'm going to try building a new PE from a vista beta by overwriting previously set source files. LHPE does what I primarily want it to but the OS version is unsupported. That's the only real drawback right now. WinPE must live in the now. It can be in the future but you want software support more than anything. ............... I like bolting things into PE. =/ Anyway here's a shovel. Get digging...

That's why I have been asking around if memdisk should be used for floppy emulation. You shouldn't be getting that from a WinME bootdisk if I don't. I get that error when emulating some hard disk setup programs and a few other tools.

Ok I completed the painful task of porting floppies... Everything appears to work fine under emulation(vmware) but emulated emulation is causing crashes. When I send the disk images to CD Shell to be run under diskemu, it starts up a drive installation program and tries to bring it into the GUI and crashes instead. Any idea why this is? A fault in Xbios?

Well....You've got one on me with SeaTools. I'm going to see if WDC still gripes at me tonight. x_X I'm using CD Shell as the multiboot tool. So far so good but I've had to remove quite a bit of programming from a lot of utilities just to get them to work.

I'm putting together an awesome multiboot disc and I run into a few problems in vmware. I realize that vmware is never 100% accurate as to what happens in a 32-Bit X86 environment when it comes to problems, but I need to know what good practice is when adding the following tools: PowerQuest Partition Magic PowerQuest Drive Image Fujitsu Drive Manager (DOS) Hitachi Drive Fitness Test (DOS) Maxtor MaxBlast 4 Samsung Disk Manager Seagate SeaTools Western Digital Caviar Install Tool WinME bootdisk So far I have been using memdisk to run these images. I run into frequent problems when trying to run the Fujitsu/Seagate/WDC tools with memdisk and diskemu. Probably because I don't have either of those drive types in this machine. What is common practice to emulate these tools?

Use Web server. It's missing from the x64 series so I'm guessing that's exactly what XP x64 is.

*reads topic* Sweet...O_o I'm not certain about the way BIN files are written , but if you have it in a bootable floppy I would just grab WinImage and forge up a new bootable IMA file. If it's two images then I would load the second disk's ID into the first. That's what I did with Partition Magic.

I believe it's possible to install since the components are "bolted" into the operating system. O_o It would just be really problematic due to the Win32 vs. Win64 conflicts. I don't even think a Win32 can be run in x64's PE.

It came back this morning to haunt me. The problem is I edit the script one part of the day where the time consists of no more than three digits. The objective here is forcing it into the 00:00 time mode regardless of it showing the AM/PM determination. The time hit 1:00 in the morning....*click* *time character deleted* THAT p***ed me off! O_o I fixed it in a matter of minutes after looking at the script one last time. # Time Function time: set hour = "$timeHour" set time = "$hour:$timeminute" Apparently putting quotes around $timeHour fixes this entirely. Time function debugged successfully.

I can't go from that. I've been doing tests in debug mode and vmware and it's the same issue. I found out a bit of code removal fixes it though. Thanks. For those wondering: # Time Function time: set hour = $timeHour #set ampm = "am" set time = "$hour:$timeminute" #if $timeHour > 12; then set hour = $timeHour - 12 #if $timeHour > 12; then set ampm = "pm" #set time = "$hour:$timeMinute:$ampm" Now I don't have to worry about it screwing up a quarter of the time. =/

I like what flyakite does with the time function in his cd shell script but it's screwing up the first and second lines of my UI 1/4 of the time because of an extra character. I'm getting sick of making fixes each point in the day just to keep it from hurting my eyes. Is there any way to force the function into 24 hour code?

This looks like a job for CD Shell. o_O

Windows XP MCE 2005 no hotfixes. I clicked OK on the prompt a few times and when I decided to move it around on the screen, BAM! IE crash. *clicks don't send* Ok now Dr. Watson crashed and sat in the background along with IE until I decided to kill it. o_O

So it's the same as what I'm trying to do. =/ Yeah use CD Shell for a boot menu(you're gonna be busy) and then build your own autorun file to have direction for your operating systems and apps upon disc load.

Apps or operating systems? I suggest you make your own autorun application.

Eh...Nevermind... Flyakite has too much crap missing from his tutorial. CD Shell is incomplete on the page too. Go here to download the binaries. Open Nero, navigate to the boot folder and grab loader.bin and set the sector load to 4. What a day. =/

I have two options to build a multiboot DVD: DiskEMU and CD Shell. I've seen what DiskEMU can do, but I want to go another route. CD Shell looks promising and more professional. I read flyakite's guide and the problem is that I want to stay away from CDIMAGE for now. Since my setup details are a bit fragmented, I just want to know how to boot to the CD Shell. I'll be concerned with my options from there later. The item in question is the boot image. How do I set that up?

You have a point. =/ I don't have any problem with it now that I've already tried it. But outside connections are faulty. I blame vmware... The unattend script doesn't work correctly on NT4 and in debug mode it just hangs when looking for drives. I'm done with it. x_X'

Get rid of EZ-Drive.