indy_dba

Yes exactly the the two Dell PC's I have tried it on; an Optiplex GX520 and Precision Workstation 380 will not PXE boot BartPE; however, from CD-ROM with the exact same BartPE build the network driver works fine. Whats even stranger is using the same driver an HP DL140 server PXE boots the same BartPE build just fine. Very odd indeed, huh?

You should definately install and run the Windows Defender BetaII most Antivirus programs by McAfee and Symantec (Norton) do not catch nearly as many Spyware programs as a dedicated Antispyware program does.

Thanks cluberti, didn't know that. I actually work for a M$ Gold Certified Partner and have WinPE 2004 & 2005 laying on my desk... I opted for BartPE initially because it seemed simpler to install and get going with, I liked all the plugin support and the GUI, but have things so well setup with it I may try WinPE just for fun and WMI support!

I dealt with a particularly nasty virus/worm/monster thing on a co-workers computer that sounds similar. He told me about strange things his computer would do and asked if I could look at it while I was setting up his broadband connection. (I figured it was just user confusion, but was I ever wrong! ) It was the scariest piece of malware I had ever seen (so I dubbed it a "monster" piece of malware), here is what it was doing: 1.) Random pop-ups from Internet Explorer 2.) Home page in IE constantly changed, no matter what we set it too 3.) Sometimes mysterious high CPU usage 4.) Couldn't open Task Manger (the sneaky thing disabled this somehow, so no way to find the offending process) 5.)a) Regedit and RegEdt32 would open, but closed immediately when the mouse moved over any are of the Regedit window 5.)B) MSCONFIG would not run... *** Darn, no way to get to the registry to disabled this thing from auto-starting on reboot *** 6.) Sometimes the PC would reboot itself (totally unexplained, no crash dump, probably some hacker controlling the PC and installing software that required reboot after all this PC was definately a part of a "bot" network) 7.) Every AntiVirus web site I could think of that had an online or free scanner would be automatically redirected in IE (Symantec, McAfee, Trend, AVG, etc.) I would get redirected to a porn site or dead link. (I couldn't even enjoy the porn sites because this monster malware had me sooo p***ed off ) Now I didn't have all my PE tools with me that day, in fact I didn't have much of any recovery disk in my Bat belt, so I gave one last ditch effort. I had been using Microsoft Antispyware Beta1 for a while and was recommending it to everyone and gave one last chance hoping this malware wouldn't redirect my link to download it....and wa laaaa I was able to find and remove a couple of "highest threat" malwares and many more "medium" and "low" threat buggers and after reboot the system was fine. This tool is now in Beta2 and has been renamed Windows Defender get it by clicking this link. Also check the Control Panel / System applet / Advanced tab / Startup & Recovery section / Advanced button and look for the "Automatically restart" box. You can uncheck this to prevent the auto-restart; however, if you have a virus or real hardware problem the Windows kernel may still freeze up and the only difference will be that you have to restart the PC manually with the power button. Good luck!

That's true, but using WMIC after the initial plain install of Windows could be very useful for querying system information and making decisions which apps and drivers to install. I keep reading hints that say the XPE plug-in for BartPE enables WMI, but I haven't had a chance to see if this supports the WMIC command-line utility. If it did, that would be very sweet, because one could query SMBIOS information before choosing which image to install from the PE environment. I wonder if WMIC is available when CMDLINES.TXT is run (before the reboot) since this is when many unattended installs perform custom actions? If no one knows for sure, I suspect a test is in order...

I found another way for you to determine the make and model of the computer to facilitate driver and application installation based on BIOS data like Manufacturer and Model.It's called WMIC for Windows Management Information Command (aka command-line utility) that runs from a .CMD or .BAT file to query EVERYTHING under the sun from SMBIOS info, Windows info, Hardware, User Accounts, Startup programs, just about anything you ever wanted to know about a Windows system via a command-line utiltiy! The best part is it's included in XP/2003 and I didn't have to install anything special to use it! Go to a CMD prompt and type WMIC, it will install and then you will be inside a WMIC prompt (if it fails to install from the CMD window just do a Start/Run WMIC and press enter). Type /? to find the w-i-d-e array or commands. Read more on WMIC at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...y/wmic.mspx#ECD Here's an example of some information you can retrieve, but there is LOTS more you can get at: U:\>wmic wmic:root\cli>csproduct get Name Name Precision WorkStation 380 wmic:root\cli>cpu get AddressWidth, CurrentClockSpeed, DeviceID, Name AddressWidth CurrentClockSpeed DeviceID Name 32 2992 CPU0 Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz 32 2992 CPU1 Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz wmic:root\cli>exit Version Here's an example of how to use it in a .CMD file: U:\>wmic csproduct get Name, Vendor > whatami.txt U:\>type whatami.txt Name Vendor Precision WorkStation 380 Dell Inc. Hope this helps some trying to perform unattended installations out... I am addicted to query the WMI now!

Correct these files come from the I386 directory from the source disk/directory and PEBuilder grabs them from there.

Do the choice and shutdown files have to be added to BartPE somehow, or are they called up on a remote share? Also, what is the reason for "=2" ? If you want these files available for use in a .BAT or .CMD script then you need to tell PEBuilder to include them when you make a BartPE build. The =2 tells PEBuilder to put them in the System32 directory if I remember correctly. See the "directories ID table" in the online help for BartPE at http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/help/english/p...inntDirectories

I can't get an IPCONFIG to work from BartPE when I boot if from PXE client from Microsoft Windows Server 2003+SP1 RIS server. I am using PEBuilder 3.1.10a, server has Intel PRO1000PM & MT cards but drivers seems to work fine, using a Server 2003+SP1 as source for the build. The basic functions of the networking seem fine, BartPE loads off the PXE server maps network drive, Ghost images to the network share fine, etc. However the new Firefox plugin is out and it would be nice to have DNS working. If I manually run PE Network Configurator and enter a DNS Server entry manually DNS appears to work fine. However, IPCONFIG /ALL still fails. The error from IPCONFIG /ALL is: Of course IPCONFIG.EXE is located in the System32 directory like it's supposed to be. Are there any known issues where the DNS entry will not get set automatically when BartPE boots up? Does anyone know why IPCONFIG fails when basic networking functions succeed?

Good work again guys! I am so used to my BartPE being in RAM drive from the PXE boot that I forget when running from CD-ROM you need to run commands from it so it's like duhhhhhh on why Shutdown wouldn't work from the CD... I am a little about not remembering this... I like the syntax of peshuteject.exe better anyway. Very cool stuff! B)

Can you be more descriptive, what exactly didn't work? Can you post the part of your .BAT file that didn't work? Remember when running .EXE's from the network share you must specify the full path to them like so: Z:\SHUTDOWN.EXE -R -F (where Z: is mapped to the directory the .BAT file is in) TIP: The other alternative is to modify the PATH variable like so: SET PATH=%PATH%;Z:\ (I haven't tried this yet in BartPE I don't know for sure if BartPE supports the SET command) This method would allow you to run the SHUTDOWN command without specifiying the full path to it.

You can do either or both let me say this another way... If you modify the Custom.inf and rebuild your BartPE CD then Shutdown.exe will be available via the System32 directory OR you can copy the Shutdown.exe file to the directory you have the .BAT file in OR you can do both! It won't hurt if Shutdown.exe is in both places (but it's probably cleaner to add it through PEBuilder via Custom.inf) but maybe much faster to test with by just copying it to the network directory the .BAT file is in. Either method will work and should get you the same result a workings SHUTDOWN -R -F command line utility!

If you modify the Custom plug-in in PEBuilder, as shown below, then the Shutdown.exe command will be automatically included in the BartPE System32 directory which is in the PATH environment variable so your .BAT file will find it correctly. Or you can just copy Shutdown.exe from an existing XP/2003 system to the network share directory where you run the .BAT file from. Either method should work. Also take a look at DJe's post #28 in this same thread. Step 1) Edit the Custom.inf file in the pebuilder3110a\plugin\!custom directory adding the following section and line to the end of the file: [SourceDisksFiles] shutdown.exe=2 Thanks for testing this out, I was sure you could make these techniques work. I feel we have advanced unattended installs up another notch (maybe to the insane level) with these steps... Great work guys! GREAT JOB! Big thanks for finding the PE Shut & Eject Utility! I will have to play with this some day. (though it's hard to find the time to make shiny round coasters when you've set up PXE/RIS... ) You never know when this technique will come in handy! Anyone buying me beer & pizza for this help? Just kidding...

Shutdown is an .EXE and yes it's normally found in the System32 directory; however, it should work fine no matter where you call it from because DOS looks for apps in the following order; current directory and if not found it searchs the locations in the PATH environment variable which includes System32 usually. Type SET PATH at a command prompt to see the list of directories DOS looks in to run programs. So there is no reason this technique shouldn't work for you. The only possible gotcha would be if the PC automatically closes the CD tray during reboot. In that case call the ejectcd.exe from the RunOnceEX registry key and this should bypass this problem. Of course you original Ghost image needs to have this RunOnceEX key already included.

I just want to make sure you understand my thought on this, DON'T use Ghost to perform the reboot... instead let Ghost finish and return to the .BAT file you ran it from and then run the ejectcd.exe followed by shutdown.exe -r -f. An example section of the .BAT file you use might look like: ghost32.exe -fx -sure -quiet -clone (add syntax for your image) ejectcd.exe shutdown -r -f Note: We did NOT use the -RB option in Ghost, so Ghost will run and gracefully exit and return control to the next line in our .BAT file which ejects the CD-ROM and finally restarts the system (using XP shutdown cmd). Have you tried this? The only problem I can forsee is if the user has walked away and the BIOS sucks the CD-ROM tray closed then BartPE is going to boot again, so perhaps the Bootfix "Press any key to boot CD" option is the best after all. However, the option menioned above is fine for admins & helpdesk that must wait on the image before leaving the PC being rebuilt, when the CD ejects they know they are done.