WinPE within a hard drive.

[mdnchauhan]

Hi All ,

I have some doubt please clear me.

Can WinPE boot the machine form Hard drive partition like other OSs?

We can boot it through CD by making ISO image, similarly can we have it in Hard drive Partition?

If yes please provide me some guidelines or web links so that I can go through these.

Thanks

Madan Chauhan

[Tripredacus]

Yes you can. During your steps to make an ISO, you get to the point where it says to run OSCDIMG to make your ISO. Well stop right there and copy the contents of the ISO folder onto a hard drive. Those file alone should be able to boot the PE.

[Lasray]

Yes Windows PE can be booted from a hard drive.

In your WAIK (OPK) documentation there is a section under 'Customizing Windows PE' named 'Walkthrough: Boot Windows PE from a hard disk'.

I think this is the information that you require.

[mdnchauhan]

Yes you can. During your steps to make an ISO, you get to the point where it says to run OSCDIMG to make your ISO. Well stop right there and copy the contents of the ISO folder onto a hard drive. Those file alone should be able to boot the PE.

Thanks for your support.

I have two hard drives one has Vista in first partition and another hard drive has XP.

As you told me I put all files of ISO folder in a primary partition of Vista Disk and set this partition as ACTIVE and I am able to boot machine from this partition. But if I do same thing in XP hard drive then I get error(NTLDR is missing) at booting time.

Do I need to change somewhere else in case of XP?

Thanks

Madan Chauhan

[Tripredacus]

If you have Vista installed, then you should use BCD to allow the boot into the PE. There many posts about using BCD, both in here and the Unattended Vista forum. Take a look around and see if you can find something that suits you.

My method of booting into the PE is with an XP partition. I haven't tested this with Vista yet. Ah, another project for me!