Tripredacus

Full Recovery diskpart script has been completed. After booting into the recovery partition, the VOL and PART info is the same, but the drive letters are switched. Also, the PE does load up in a RAMDISK. Image redeployment takes about 5 minutes, but I am going to put up a progress timer for about 7 minutes. diskpart select disk 0 select vol 0 delete vol create part pri size=62220 select part 1 active assign letter=d format fs=ntfs quick Now with diskpart, we assign the letter D to the drive that will be C. On the reboot, the correct letters appear. Also in addition to running the MBR reset, I also need to reapply the hidden value to the recovery partition or else it becomes visible in Windows. My task now will be to create the GUI and figure out Projector settings. I am using Flash right now for testing, and to keep me in some sort of practice using it. Not sure if we will end up using it at all, or using a different app instead. I made this thread thinking it would be more involved or harder than this. I am surprised really.

What is the size of the USB key and what file system did you format it as?

Yes, I believe this script is in the link I provided also.

NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, I may be unable to provide any source code or code examples. If any code examples are posted in response to any of my issues, I cannot post whether or not I had used them or not in my program. I have restarted my attempts to create a recovery partition using Windows PE. I have been successful (at last) getting the recovery partition to be bootable, and those details are here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=130609 On my eval unit, the recovery partition contains the contents of the winpe_x86\ISO folder on my Technician PC. The technician PC, aka UNCLESOCKS, specs can be see in the "my servers" link in my signature. My PE has all extra packages installed (as with my other PE versions) with a couple of additional items: - Flash Projector EXE as the GUI - AutoIT EXEs in the fscommand folder for full.exe, repair.exe, restart.exe and admin.exe. - MBR.EXE (this also must exist in the main image) - Recovery.wim (the image of the drive) Full.exe will clean Partition 1, redeploy recovery.wim. Repair.exe leaves the disk alone and just redeploys the wim. restart.exe will restart the computer using wpeutil reboot. admin.exe is an authentication wrapper to grant access to the command prompt. I felt it best that this could be used by technicians to do any advanced PE commands, but also so that the end-user does not have this ability. So if you type in the correct password, you get the command prompt. If you type in the wrong password, it displays an error. The credentials are encrypted into the EXE itself and not stored on the system in any other way. Current Tasks 1. Need to determine which mix of commands for DISKPART is needed to reimage the © hard drive without damaging the recovery partition. When you boot into the recovery partition, it becomes the C drive (instead of X drive common with Win PE). I could accomplish this if I can make it so the Win PE boots using a different drive letter, or by examining the partition information in my next round of testing. 2. Currently, the repair (and full) options will attempt to restart the computer after deploying the image. Unfortunately, this is called using AutoIT's RUNWAIT function, and for some reason the computer attempts to restart before the image is deployed. I will have to remove this option. 3. The Projector (while it is 1024x768) does not open maximized and you can still see the command prompt behind it. I need to make this take up the entire screen. 4. I need to disable ALT+TAB options, which I should be able to do via the Win PE registry or by using ActionScript within the Projector.

I got it to work, and also know why the attributes were being assigned to both volumes. This happened because the partition table is set up as MBR and not the GUID method. Terrabyte Unlimited has a tutorial (of sorts) to set up a recovery partition. They also have a second revision. http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=277 I had to do some additional commands with MBR.EXE also. These in the image phase: mbr 0 /install selm 5 11 "Press F11 for recovery" 0xC 0x1C mbr 0 1 /h The second, sets the second partition to hidden, so it does not appear in Windows. It still appears in DISKPART but it does not display the HIDDEN attribute, but it is still hidden anyways. Also have to add this to the boot process of the OS on the recovery partition: mbr 0 /reset This makes it so after you reboot from the recovery partition, it sets it back to being hidden and makes the first partition active, to allow you to boot into Windows again. For now I am working on getting my custom software to work off the recovery partition, and for that I will make a post in the Windows PE forum.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/D...78E6/SMBIOS.doc This is in German, but he code examples are in English. You could also try dropping msinfo32 into your PE to see if it can read the information as well.

OK I found out why the C drive wouldn't boot. Diskpart showed both Vol 0 and Vol 1 to be HIDDEN NODEFAULTDRIVELETTER. So I clear those attributes on Vol 0 (Drive C) and it cleared it on both volumes. I assigned a letter to Vol 0 (C:) and Vol 1 (D:) but for some reason if I mark Vol 1 as HIDDEN, both volumes get marked HIDDEN. And yes, I am using sel vol 0 and sel vol 1. So at this point, neither of the above MBR commands allow it to find the second partition.

Its not that it doesn't allow it, but that isn't its function. It is meant for the clients, not for the server.

I am not certain. I do not have access to a Win PE 1.x source to play with.

Try putting it on a CD and see if you get different results. Are you doing this on a live machine or a VM?

I am, once again, trying to find an alternate solution to running a system recovery than using the software we currently use. This time, instead of duplicating their recovery partition in order to redeploy with Imagex, I am making one of my own. To do this, I built a custom Win PE that launches a Flash Projector app that the user can use to recover the C drive. I have not been able to see if this portion is working yet as I am having a problem getting it to attempt to boot to the second partition, or even the main partition. Jaclaz has mentioned a MBR app here: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...st&p=769544 Which I must not be using properly. Let me run down the steps I've gone through so far, and how the system behaves after the reboot. 1. Boot into our normal PE and run the following in diskpart: select disk 0 clean create part pri size=62220 active assign letter=c format fs=ntfs quick create part pri select part 2 assign letter=d format fs=fat32 quick exit 2. Deploy the image to C, which is a Windows XP Pro SP2 x86 image. 3. Deploy the recovery image onto drive D 4. open up diskpart again select disk 0 select vol 1 att vol set hidden att vol set nodefaultdriveletter 5. Run mbr program (its in the recovery partition) mbr 0 /install selm 5 11 "Press F11 for recovery" 0xC 0x52 6. Restart the PC. If I let the computer boot normally, it reboots by itself and loops this way. This is fine atm because I don't care if it can boot into Windows. If I press F11 when the prompt comes up, it reports that it cannot find boot media, or if LAN boot is enabled, it tries to boot of the IBA (Intel Boot Agent). So I am thinking I am missing a step. Any ideas? The method of installing the MBR or the bootloader needs to be a 32bit app so that I can run it from the PE after imaging.

I'm not sure I am getting what you are asking. So instead, I will just run down how I use it. I took the original HTA (I'm using the older version but the same can be done with the current) and modified it. There are some things you need to modify, such as the Imagepath, which tells the HTA where to look for the images. I changed it to z:\. Then I edit my startnet.cmd file and have it map the Z: to the folder the WIMs are located in. Also need to add regsvr32 for the DLL included with the download, and lastly use mshta to launch the HTA itself. Rebuild the PE.wim and update it in WDS. Then you have your client that you want to image. Presuming you have images already or you can make new images. You boot to the network. If your WDS is set up properly, it will load the WinPE up on a RAMDISK on the client. The PE loads, turns on networking, maps the network drive, registers the DLL and opens the HTA. The HTA will then show you what images you have. If it can't find any images (or perhaps you don't have any yet) It will open a browse box. If you do have images, they will be listed. You select the WIM and image you want, and it will format the drive. After this it copies the image down. When it is done, you can reboot or shut down. This method works best on a WDS running Server 2008, as it supports multicast. Server 2003 has issues with more than 4 clients (in my experience and my setup). So using this HTA I can image up to 40 clients at once. 40 happens to be the number of interfaces I have on the same subnet as the WDS. See IcemanND's Win PE guide which is stickied to learn how to make your Win PE media (or boot image) and how to capture images.

0x80070026 0x26 = 38L = ERROR_HANDLE_EOF STRSAFE_E_END_OF_FILE Try turn off firewall and disable antivirus and run Windows Update again. This error is likely the file got corrupted while downloading it. You can try to download it directly instead of through Windows Update. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959209/

This program is run from the client and is not automated to the point that it doesn't require interaction. Its more of a GET instead of a PUSH with this, it is just an app that runs in the PE.

Resolution options are on line 26 of the HTA. SetResSettings = "1024 768 32 1" 'Setres default parameters. Make sure your file has these same settings.

As far as checking the CRC of an ISO, I do not know this answer. I have seen many issues with the newest WAIK ISO, including CRC errors, unable to burn properly. I have also experienced a problem with the new OPK ISO, which had 3 failed burns and I had to resort to mounting the ISO via an unsupported tool on Microsoft's site. A link to this tool in within the following: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916902

In order to troubleshoot your issue, you need to invoke the F8 at startup. Then choose "disable automatic restart on system failure" and then it should stop at a BSOD.

I fired up WinDiff to check the new version against my custom version. There isn't anything in this version for me to add really. The code differences aren't that big a deal to me. I did see (I think) that you removed the progress bar support during the /apply command. Instead of trying to make the incremental progress bar (as it would appear you wanted) how about just having an animated GIF or something to be on the screen? If could just be a fake progress bar. I've received complaints from my users about the progress bar because sometimes it doesn't even show up. Of course it would always appear as a gray rectangle. I also see that you put my custom WinPE backgrounds up on your site. Can you drop me a credit on your site someplace for them? I am going to be doing testing of WinPE 3.0 using your HTA (or my version of it) on both x86 and amd64 versions of WinPE. I will let you know if I encounter any problems.

I'm not sure. I do all my Win PE testing on a pilot network using physical servers and clients. I try not to use VM type sessions for testing because it does not translate well into the production environment.

What behaviour are you seeing with your CD? Is it not doing something properly? Is there an error or a message?

I am piloting a new burn-in program, and it is highly configurable. For example if you only want it to test memory, you can disable the other tests, otherwise you can test everything all at once. There is a regular and professional version, you probably don't need the Pro. Pro lets you test ports with loopback adapters, which is something my company requires. They have a 30 day trial that you can use for both editions. The product is called PassMark BurnInTest. http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm It can only be run in Windows, which contrasts with other burn software we've used in the past which only work as a Live CD, and are limited hardware wise. This one seems to like hardware that works as long as you have it installed in Windows. I still don't know if we are going to end up using it but it seems to work fine, although I haven't been able to get it to run off a WinPE disc yet. I haven't used it enough to know much more than that, so don't ask me any questions about it.

This is only in Windows. The brightness is fine at boot. Also, that is how I changed the brightness temporarily, by using the Fn + Sun up or Sun down.

You need to provide some additional information. Based upon the actual issue, this thread may yet be moved into a separate forum if this isn't an issue with Windows PE. Since you posted this as a reply to IcemanND's stickied thread, I am to presume that you followed his guide to create your PE for imaging. I need the following information: 1. What method of booting the WinPE are you using? PXE, UFD, CD? 2. Which Win PE version are you using and which architecture? 3. Did you use the WAIK, OPK or a third party tool (such as BartPE) to create your boot image? 4. Which operating system are you attempting to deploy? 5. What components were installed into your PE, such as WMI, Vista Offline Servicing 1.1, etc? 6. How much memory in the client (MININT) pc, also note if the client uses RAID or AHCI.

Geezery's HTA (which I use) is not locked down so that you cannot edit it. Therefore you can remove (remark) options out of the code to limit what your users can do. For example, in my version of his HTA (see it in my signature for a link) I remarked out the buttons for Capture, Append, Mount network drive. I did this because, in my production model, the standard users of this program should not need to ever use these options. In my case, mounting network drives is done via startnet.cmd and image maintenance is only the task of the evaluation guy, and myself, the image control guy. All the users get to do is deploy images and install software after the image is deployed. Of course your scope may be different and you can change things as you need to. Some knowledge of HTML and scripting languages is needed to edit them, but everything is open source so you can research it easily. I still do not understand everything in the HTA either.

My sister has a strange issue with her notebook. It is a Dell Studio 1535 that came with Vista Home Premium installed. When it is plugged in, the screen is dim, and when it is on battery, the screen is (normal) bright. I went into the power options where you can modify the power scheme, but there is no option for screen brightness. I've looked online and found tutorials to tell you exactly where it is, and with screenshots, but this option is not present. I did also find information about some OEM's own software may control certain configs and this would make some things not appear in normal CPLs. I was not able to find any Dell or Power related software installed on the computer, so I can't say that is the case with this one. I had temporary resolved the issue by changing the brightness with the keyboard, while on power and on battery. It seemed to remember these settings and haven't had a problem until today. Now it is doing what it did before. Is there any ideas about how to set the brightness levels in Windows, or why the option doesn't appear?