How to reboot into windows PE 2.x from a running XP/Vista system

[viralmeh]

Hey Guys,

I have been working on windows PE 2.x since a while I have managed to image the drive using imagex and deploy that image back to the drive from Windows PE using imagex.

The next thing i am trying to do is to reboot into windows PE. Say for example i have windows XP running and i wanna make some files changes in windows Xp and reboot and the computer boots in windows PE.

later on from windows pe i can revert those changes and get booted back in windows XP

I tried a lot of things but they just dont work

the contents of my Win PE iso files are

boot.sdi

bootmgr

etfsboot.com

imagex.exe

Wimscript.ini

[boot ] folder

[fonts]

bcd

boot.sdi

bootfix.bin

etfsboot.com

[EFI] folder

[sources] folder

boot.wim

i tried looking into winpe.chm but all the walkthroughs in there start with booting into windows PE from a CD or USB drive. I dont wanna do that. I am trying to make it totally zero touch and without using GHOST files.

Can any one tell me how to do this.

Thanx in advance

[IcemanND]

Are you trying to boot from a PE install on the hard drive, CD, USB? If it's the CD/USB you would have to change your boot order before rebooting, if it's from the hard drive change the default os in the boot.ini.

[Tripredacus]

I think what he is trying to do is a manual WinRE...

[viralmeh]

I think what he is trying to do is a manual WinRE...

Basically im trying to implement an automated reload...where the image of the drive is available and an application running in XP which will make some changes to the the existing working system and will reboot it so that it will boot up in windows pe where i can run another application that would format the existing drive, copy the .wim image file and using imagex deploy the image back on the drive.

so thats why i would need to change files but as u can see i have PE 2.x which runs on bootmgr and the XP system runs on NTLDR its not working for me so i would have to some how save the existing XP setting make changes so that it would allow the bootmgr to control the booting and then boot only windows pe.

I hope you guys are getting me.

[WreX]

For what you're trying to do it sounds like your best option would be to include a bootable PE WIM file on the hard drive and use Vista's boot loader to boot into XP or the PE WIM. The system I've developed has both options in the boot menu, defaulting to XP, but you could also set it up without multiple options so it only boots XP. Then when you run your reload routine it could configure the BCD (boot configuration database) to boot the PE WIM which would be configured to automatically do your thing via startnet.cmd or what have you.

I posted how I'm configuring my boot loader here: http://www.msfn.org/board/findpost-p768846.html

You'll need to make the bcdedit.exe file available when in Windows so you can issue the commands to change the BCD. If you have multiple options in your boot loader you would only need to issue the command "bcdedit /bootsequence GUID_OF_YOUR_PE_OPTION" to set it to one-time boot to PE. Otherwise you'll need to run the set of commands that will reconfigure the boot loader to only have PE as the bootable option.

[viralmeh]

For what you're trying to do it sounds like your best option would be to include a bootable PE WIM file on the hard drive and use Vista's boot loader to boot into XP or the PE WIM. The system I've developed has both options in the boot menu, defaulting to XP, but you could also set it up without multiple options so it only boots XP. Then when you run your reload routine it could configure the BCD (boot configuration database) to boot the PE WIM which would be configured to automatically do your thing via startnet.cmd or what have you.

I posted how I'm configuring my boot loader here: http://www.msfn.org/board/findpost-p768846.html

You'll need to make the bcdedit.exe file available when in Windows so you can issue the commands to change the BCD. If you have multiple options in your boot loader you would only need to issue the command "bcdedit /bootsequence GUID_OF_YOUR_PE_OPTION" to set it to one-time boot to PE. Otherwise you'll need to run the set of commands that will reconfigure the boot loader to only have PE as the bootable option.

Thank you so much...your post helped me alot...I did manage to do atleast the dual boot and the one time boot in windows pe and then running the bootsect.exe /N52 to allow normal XP booting...The only thing i would like to inform you is that in your post you didnt mention anything about copying the winpe.wim file to the c:\win\winpe.wim. apart from that it was a great help.

Thanx a ton