Using Net Use Command in WinPE

[crowe80]

I'm fairly new to learning how to image Windows 7 images using WinPE. I work at a business where we are currently on XP and I use a combination of Ghost and UIU to create our images. We will soon be going to Windows 7 and I'm learning how to save images out on a share so anyone in our IT department can go out and grab an image depending on what device they are imaging. I have created my WinPE boot disc and I have the image ready to copy over to my share but when I use the net use \\computer name\folder it keeps saying the network location cannot be found. I'm unable to ping the pc from WinPE as well. Here is my setup. I just have a desktop PC with Windows XP that has an external hard drive hooked to and it's shared out and called "images". This is where my current XP images are as well so I know it's shared out because everyone can get to those fine using Ghost. So anyways, I have the XP PC with external hard drive shared out and named images. Now I have another PC that I want to install Windows 7 on and the .wim file is already saved on the external hard drive of the XP machine. But like I said, when I use the net use command it's not finding the PC on the network. The firewall is off on the XP machine and I can ping it from any other computer on our network. Is there something I need to configure within WinPE to get it to see the XP machine on my network? Using the net use command and IP address of the XP machine does not work either. Seems like I'm missing a step to get the WinPE disc to see computers on my network. Any help would be appreciated!!!

[bphlpt]

Have you installed the LAN driver into WinPE for your network card? I haven't seen a WinPE yet that has one automatically included that is compatible with all LAN cards.

Cheers and Regards

[crowe80]

I have not done that. I'm sure that could be the main cause. I'm still learning all this and was not aware I had to do that. I will give it a try, thanks!

[crowe80]

I am trying to copy my Windows 7 image of an HP 8200 Elite onto our network on a shared device which is an HP7100. I believe I installed the LAN driver correctly (maybe not??) for the 8200 onto the PE boot disc. Do I also need to copy the HP 7100 LAN driver that is on the network?

[Tripredacus]

You need to have NIC driver support for any PCs that your WinPE is running on. To see if you need it at all, just go to CMD and do IPConfig. If you have an IP then you don't need to add the driver.

[Atheros]

as trip said, Networking driver should be injected into the image. however if your not in a DHCP enviorment (i do tests with a winpe with a mounted ISO on a VM). in this instance i need to set a static address by firstly getting the adaptor name using ipconfig

then by using the folowing command

netsh interface ipv4 add address "Wired Ethernet Connection" 192.168.x.x 255.255.255.0

?where "Wired Ethernet Connection" is the name of your adaptor

you may or may not have to put the work "static" between the adaptor name and the network address depending on what PE you are using.

[crowe80]

I do work in a DHCP environment. Here are the steps I performed and please excuse my ignorance I'm sure I"m just not doing this correctly. Like I posted before I have a shared PC on our network that is an HP7100 that runs Windows XP. This is where I want to save my images to. So for now I have WAIK installed on the 7100 XP machine. I'm doing all my command line things within this tool. I have an HP 8200Elite that I have Windows 7 on and I want to capture this image and save it out on the 7100 XP machine that is shared out. So back on the XP machine while creating my WinPE disc I get to the point that I need to add the 8200 Lan Driver to the boot disc because currently if I boot up to WinPE I don't get any IP address when doing IP config nor can I ping the shared PC by name or IP from the Win7 PC. I have the 8200 Elite LAN driver saved on the XP machine and the Windows 7 PC at: C:\Driver\8200Lan\e1c62x64.inf So with that being said here is the command I use:

Dism /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\driver\8200Lan\e1c62x64.inf

then

Dism /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\driver /recurse

From this point I then commit to the changes, export the WIM to remove space held by files no longer in use, Copy the updated WIM to ISO folder and create the ISO image.

I put the Disc that I burn the ISO image to into the 8200 and it boots up like it should but I'm still not getting and IP after doing IP config and when I try to do the net use command by the PC name or IP I still get an error saying it cannot be reached. system Error 1231 has occurred. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[bphlpt]

While I understand that WAIK can be installed on computers running XP, I have also seen where there often seems to be issues using an image created by WAIK installed in that way. Legolash2o is probably going to have to drop support for XP in his Windows 7 Toolkit for that reason. Have you tried putting WAIK on a Win7 machine, creating your images there, then only using the XP machine to share the images out? (Unless I misunderstood what you are doing.) If that works, then at least you would know where you need to focus on fixing the problem, IF it can be fixed.

Cheers and Regards

[crowe80]

I have not tried creating the WinPE from a Windows 7 PC. I will however try this step next and let you know if it works or not. Thanks!

[Tripredacus]

Dism /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\driver\8200Lan\e1c62x64.inf

then

Dism /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\driver /recurse

This is redundant. DISM isn't smart enough to overwrite an existing driver I don't think, so if you did both of these commands, you'll have e1c62x64.inf as two different oem*.inf. I don't think it would cause a problem but it is an unneeded step.

[Atheros]

ensure that the driver inf that you are using contains the hardware id and is of the correct architecture for the winpe that your using.

if you installed the WMIC package into your winpe you can get the VEN and DEV from the "WMIC NIC" command within PE.

also veryify your winpe startup actually enables networking: manual command: "wpeutil initializenetwork"

[crowe80]

In case anyone else needs help with this and looks through these forums in the future. Switching to a PC that had Windows7 on it to create my winpe disc from WAIK seemed to fix the networking issue. However I did run into an issue when trying to install the driver for the 8200 which is the PC I wanted to capture the image from. On the XP PC when I would run this command it loaded it fine (or at least said it was successful)

Dism /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\driver\8200Lan\e1c62x64.inf

I only had the .inf file in that folder nothing else.But on the Windows7 PC I had this saved in the same spot and it kept saying it could not find the folder so I copied over the whole folder that had the .sys files and everything in it for this LAN driver and just ran this command instead:

Dism /image:c:\winpe_x86\mount\ /Add-Driver /Driver:c:\driver /recurse

It found the files and loaded them and then it worked. But even running this last command with just the .inf file in the 8200Lan folder it would not find it. So I had to have the whole package of files for that driver in the folder for Windows 7 to say it was successful. But other than that I got an image copied to my network share. Thanks!!!!

[Tripredacus]

Well of course. Only certain kinds of drivers will work with just the INF file. An INF is just a set of instructions which includes copying relevant files. If you didn't have these files in that folder, then DISM would give you an error when trying to execute the INF.

[crowe80]

One more thing I'm noticing and then I think I can figure some of this out. When I go to deploy this image from the network share and I run through all my commands and it boots up the image is fine but for some reason everytime I boot it has the black screen and it wants me to choose an operating system and Windows 7 is listed twice. I would like to be able to just boot and not choose anything and it just go straight to the login screen. Currently this is how I set it up to deploy from the network share:

Put WinPE disc in to boot to it

in the CMD window I run DISKPART

LIST DISK (dIsk 0 is all that comes up which is fine, I want to partition just a single drive)

SELECT DISK 0

CLEAN

CREATE PART PRI

SELECT PART 1

ACTIVE

ASSIGN LETTER=C:

FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="CDRIVE" QUICK

EXIT

Then I run: NET USE M: \\myserver name\my shared folder

Then I type: IMAGEX /APPLY M:\C_image.wim "Drive C" C:

Then: BCDBOOT C:\WINDOWS

Then I reboot

[Tripredacus]

Look at IcemanND's guide. It tells you how to use startnet.cmd to handle this. Its pinned in this forum and he also posted a link to it in your other thread.