Boot from HDD from within WinPE

[Soultech]

Hi All,

I'm wondering if there is some way to add a script into WinPE that inspects the HDD and if it sees a flag file then it will boot the hard drive instead of booting the rest of WinPE? I mean from within WinPE not a 'Press A Key' to boot option.

Thanks in advance.

[jaclaz]

Hi All,

I'm wondering if there is some way to add a script into WinPE that inspects the HDD and if it sees a flag file then it will boot the hard drive instead of booting the rest of WinPE? I mean from within WinPE not a 'Press A Key' to boot option.

Thanks in advance.

It seems to me pretty much pointless to actually load the PE (to be able to execute the script) to unload it in order to boot from the hard disk.

What you want to do can be easily achieved by using grub4dos as the primary bootloader for the PE.

Which kind of PE are we talking about:

1. PE 1.x XP/2003 based
   
2. PE 2.x Vista/Server 2008 based
   
3. PE 3.x Windows 7 based
   

VERY summed up example for PE 1.xx, menu.lst on CD:

title PE if NOT file exists
root (hd0,0)
find /tagfile.tag || configfile (cd)/PE_menu.lst
find /tagfile.tag && chainloader /ntldr

PE_menu.lst

title PE
root (cd)
chainloader /I386/SETUPLDR.BIN

For PE 2.xx, last line should invoke BOOTMGR instead.

jaclaz