andym2508 Posted August 20, 2010 Share Posted August 20, 2010 (edited) Is it possible to have a bootable USB Drive (flash or hDD) which contains and can run Windows 7 installers AND Win PE3 boot.wim files?I've spent the past week trying to do this without success (it only seems to use the one) and would appreciate a definitive answer!My ultimate goal would be to use my 300gb usb hdd to boot a menu which contains 1 - my winpe3 boot.wim with pstart etc 2 - xp installer 3 - windows 7/2008 installers 4 - recovery pe? 5 - live OS which can work with local pc's c drive Many thanksAndy Edited August 21, 2010 by andym2508 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelsenellenelvian Posted August 21, 2010 Share Posted August 21, 2010 6 - Hiren's UBCD etcThis is warez and as such means we cannot help you here... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted August 21, 2010 Share Posted August 21, 2010 The answer is yes, but a couple things.1. Recovery PE? like WinRE is actually just WinPE.2. WinPE can be a custom OS, look here:Your main problem is that you would need a 32bit WinPE to build, but then you can't install 64bit OS. Another problem (uh yeah I can't tell you how to do this) is if you don't build your boot environment properly, you may find that no PC will have enough memory to boot your custom PE. You already received your warn about Hiren's... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym2508 Posted August 21, 2010 Author Share Posted August 21, 2010 The answer is yes, but a couple things.1. Recovery PE? like WinRE is actually just WinPE.2. WinPE can be a custom OS, look here:Your main problem is that you would need a 32bit WinPE to build, but then you can't install 64bit OS. Another problem (uh yeah I can't tell you how to do this) is if you don't build your boot environment properly, you may find that no PC will have enough memory to boot your custom PE. You already received your warn about Hiren's... 1) Basically just the windows recovery tools which enable you to repair mbr etc? - cool! I assume I can do these tasks from WinPE custom OS 2) Would running WinPE as a custom OS allow me to view a local computers hard drives? - I assume so looking at the screenshots on the link provided - that would also negate the need for third party tools.Thanks for your advice and clarification, I suppose I will have to carry a separate USB key for 7x64 installs - not the end of the world!Just setting up test machine to run both 32-bit and 64-bit dual boot so I can start creating!Apologies for Hiren reference, I only use it for its password and explorer tools which i should not longer need once i set up portable os.many thanksAndy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym2508 Posted August 22, 2010 Author Share Posted August 22, 2010 What I have managed to do so far is make my usb flash drive bootable, copy the contents of 7x32-bit iso to the route - tested installing - worked okCreated Portable Win7PE with PStart etc - renamed and copied the generated Wim file to SOURCES directory on flash drive as bootp.wimUsed EasyBCD 2 to change boot record so I get asked to install Windows 7 32-bit or run Windows 7 Portable.I just need to add drivers to allow Portable 7 to run universally accross all our machines - I'm currently stripping the huge installer files out of my driver folder.Separate USB Key acquired for Win 7 64-bit installer!The next two goals of my project are to setup a customised win7 installer - following guides on here! and to try and install Windows XP from same active partition as everything else! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mith Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 What I have managed to do so far is make my usb flash drive bootable, copy the contents of 7x32-bit iso to the route - tested installing - worked okCreated Portable Win7PE with PStart etc - renamed and copied the generated Wim file to SOURCES directory on flash drive as bootp.wimUsed EasyBCD 2 to change boot record so I get asked to install Windows 7 32-bit or run Windows 7 Portable.I just need to add drivers to allow Portable 7 to run universally accross all our machines - I'm currently stripping the huge installer files out of my driver folder.Separate USB Key acquired for Win 7 64-bit installer!The next two goals of my project are to setup a customised win7 installer - following guides on here! and to try and install Windows XP from same active partition as everything else!Is it not that the wims contain the os types e.g. x64 or x86, so as long as a wim is made in x64 mode and dismounted correctly, you should just be able to put an x64 wim (whether this be win 7 etc) in the sources folder and use the easy bcd boot menu to point to that wim?Can any other user tell me if that is the case? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted August 26, 2010 Share Posted August 26, 2010 A 64bit WinPE can deploy both 32 and 64bit images. Windows 7 setup doesn't really care what the architecture is. Not sure about Vista, because Vista still uses an installer where 7 basically uses Imagex. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym2508 Posted September 6, 2010 Author Share Posted September 6, 2010 The problem I have is that not all of the machines I support are 64-bit capable, thats why I went with the two stick option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted September 7, 2010 Share Posted September 7, 2010 I agree. I use two boot images as well just for this reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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