Preventing closure of WinPE environment

[mcslemon]

Hi,

We are looking to use WinPE 2.0 with ImageX to deploy our builds. I've spent the last few days tweaking it as much as possible.

I have one slight concern with the ease at which the environment can be shut down. Obviously whatever I do can't protect against power off's etc, but will help stop fiddling students from closing it mid Image!

Currently we use Zenworks which allows us to lock the machine until the image has completed. Is there a way of hiding the X in the command window of WinPE, enabling ImageX to complete its task?

Cheers,

Neil.

[bj-kaiser]

create a custom application in a script/compiled language of choice and let it run as shell. That way you have full control over the session. search the docs and the forum for winpeshl.ini

Edited August 7, 2007 by bj-kaiser

[mcslemon]

next question then as that sounds like a good idea..

What language is a good platform to create this? VB6, VB2003 + VB2005 don't appear to work.

[zorphnog]

I've found the simplest, for me at least, is to use an HTA/VBScript.

[Jazkal]

I've found the simplest, for me at least, is to use an HTA/VBScript.

Yep, HTA would be my first choice. But I am going to be moving my HTA's to AutoIt3 here in the near future.

[mcslemon]

Just seen AutoIt myself... interesting!

[bj-kaiser]

Would you be interested in wimgapi/imagex integration into AutoIt? I already have done some work there. The only thing that doesn't work is setting up a callback function to visualize the progress while the image gets applied, for capture it works gracefully. (this seems to be a bug in the wimgapi.dll, read the thread in the autoit forums)

This is my latest include for wimgapi.dll (at the moment)

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...st&p=385299

You will also need DllCallback.au3 from here if you want to use a callback function for capturing:

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...st&p=384128

[mcslemon]

That also sounds interesting!

I've looked at imagex and autoit myself and just out of interest, found this:

#include <GUIConstants.au3>
#include "constants.au3"
$gui = GUICreate("console stuff")
$edit = GUICtrlCreateEdit("", 10, 10, 300, 300, BitOr($WS_VSCROLL, $WS_HSCROLL,$ES_READONLY))
GUISetState()
$ping = Run(@ComSpec & " /c ping google.com", @SystemDir, @SW_HIDE, $STDERR_CHILD + $STDOUT_CHILD)
While 1
	$lineout = StdoutRead($ping)
	If @Error = -1 Then ExitLoop
	GUICtrlSetData($edit, $lineout & @CRLF, 1)
WEnd

While 1
	$get = GUIGetMsg()
	If $get = -3 Then Exit
WEnd

From here: http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/lofivers...php?t13787.html

It puts the output of the Comspec into a scrollable text window... only thing I've noticed is that once the task in the comspec has finished, the script goes into a loop. But otherwise looks quite interesting.

I'll take a look at what you've done as this would be very useful.

Neil.

[bj-kaiser]

Stdoutread and imagex != fun.

Since imagex.exe seems to suffer from an error similar to the one found in wimgapi.dll. You will see the output of imagex.exe only after the program ended. I.e. as long as you run it from cmd.exe it looks ok, but if you want to redirect the output be it a file or read into AutoIt, you will not see anything until imagex.exe is done.

And thats not what we want. But so far there seems no solution to this behaviour other than let imagex.exe run from a wrapper that redirects the output ... i will see if i can find that link again.

[mcslemon]

Yeah just noticed that! lol

I'm getting back to the situation where people can abort the cmd windows! I was hoping either HTA's or Autoit would help. At the end of the day it's not a big deal, its just with our other imaging product we're able to block user intervention once the image is proceeding.

I'll take a look at the wrapper link when you find it and see what it does for me.

Cheers

[bj-kaiser]

http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/index.ph...st&p=316159

there is the solution. though i would prefer to use the .dll instead of adding another wrapper around imagex.

One trick you could try also would be AutoIts BlockInput() function, it will disable every mouse and keyboard input other than Ctrl-Alt-Del.

[mcslemon]

Cool, I'll have a play with that in a bit.

Thanks for your help so far.