Boot PE 2.0 from HD from an XP machine

[egorss78]

Did some searching and was wondering if anyone has been ale to do the following.

Have an existing XP based machine, booted and running

Copy the PE 2.0 to the hard drive, have the machine reboot and load PE instead of XP

We are looking for a way to deploy PE without neededing a flash drive or CD of Windows PE. Thanks.

Edited August 13, 2007 by egorss78

[zorphnog]

Well I haven't tried this, but I guess its possible. You would have to change the bootsector and make sure the boot files were laid out properly. Of course the easier way would be to deploy via pxe network boot.

[egorss78]

Yes, but we are looking to be able to script this all of this. In theory we could have the machine rebuild itself every night using PE to setup and install XP. My understanding and experience with PXE is that it still requires some user interaction. Thanks for the reply though.

[IcemanND]

In theory we could have the machine rebuild itself every night using PE to setup and install XP.

I can think of many easier ways to accomplish that.

But yes you can boot windows xp and pe 20 from the same hard drive, you will need to change the windows installation path for one or the other since they both by default use c:\windows for their install. You could then use BCDEDIT to change the default boot os and then restart the machine and have it boot to the new default selection. Then at the end of the xp installation you would have to fix the boot configuration data file to dual boot again.

see here for using bcdedit to create the boot config file for the dual boot:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...st&p=678507

[tap52384]

If Windows XP does not natively support the Vista bootloader, then how could XP interface with it and tell it to do such and such? Although you can boot with the Vista Bootloader, does MSConfig recognize it?

[bj-kaiser]

if you got enough RAM, why dont just load the (average of my builds) 100 MB to RAM? (like from CD/UFD)

That way you will only have the bootloader and .wim file on the HDD. No single files. Downside is, updating is more or less of a hassle (depending of your view on it). You have to modify the .wim image for any future changes instead of directly manipulating the files.

If there is any interest I'll try to look into RAMdisk boot from HDD if not somebody has done it before.

edit:

Yes, but we are looking to be able to script this all of this. In theory we could have the machine rebuild itself every night using PE to setup and install XP. My understanding and experience with PXE is that it still requires some user interaction. Thanks for the reply though.

Wake-on-LAN + PXE should do it. I.E. your Server wakes up the PCs one by one remotely, booting them into PE from which you start some sort of setup routine. You will need some scripting, but it should be the better way than placing a WPE image + bootloader on existing machines. I have something for the re-installation process built in autoit3 that can deal with unattended installation and .wim/sysprepped images. If there is any interest, I can share it.

Edited August 13, 2007 by bj-kaiser

[IcemanND]

msconfig in XP will recognize the xp boot.ini stuff but not the boot configuration data file of pe2/vista. But BCDEDIT from PE2 will run in XP and can be scripted to modify the bootloader for xp/pe2