VistaPE Lan Boot from Windows Deployment (WDS)

[andrew.vint]

Hi All,

Over the last few days i just found the wonders that are Winbuilder and VistaPE, after several late nights and hours trawling through these forums i finally got it all to work.

I am sure there is many more hours of tweaking before i get it to work the way i really want it, however now that i have it up and running i need to move onto the next stage.

That is namely to get it to boot over the network from the WDS server on SBS 2003.

Now i am sure that someone out there has done this so i am asking for some help.

I have the completed VistaPE folder and I also have the ISO which i want to boot properly from WDS ???

I have been playing about for a while and i have a kind of workaround.

It is still in its infancy and there is a few bugs that need to be ironed out to get it to work properly.

1) Installed WDS on my Server 2003

2) Dowloaded the WAIK kit from the microsoft site

3) Installed F1_WINPE.WIM

At this point it boots from the network and takes you to the WinPE command prompt.

4) Installed WinBuilder

5) Built and tested ISO

6) Copied BOOT.WIM to \RemoteInstall\Boot\x86\Images

7) Renamed F1_WINPE.WIM to F1_WINPE.OLD

8) Renamed BOOT.WIN to F1_WINPE.WIM

At this point i can boot from the network and the VistaPE image loads ....

It does however flag up a few errors and the start menu items are all missing, the app files are still in the Program Files folder of VistaPE and still run. In WDS console the details in the Boot images is also all missing.

Now as a play about this is quite good, however it is nowhere near ready to be put in a production environment.

So come on people lets put our heads together and try and sort this out, i cant believe i am the only one that wants to boot VistaPE from WDS.

Regards

Andrew

[Atheros]

ok you've kinda lost me.

what exactly are you trying to do here?

when you get in PE2.0 what are you trying to do?

[Nuno Brito]

Please post this question on the VistaPE forum were the author or a member might help solve this question.

Based on my experience I'd say that you need to adapt VistaPE to avoid any links to CD locations. WinPE 2.0 boots completely into RAM by default but VistaPE will link back to the removable media to save RAM usage on very big sized apps (like openoffice for example).

Remove all apps included on your build and try again.