Windows PE plus the Microsoft .NET Framework

[ZoRoNaX]

Hello everyone,

First I'll introduce myself a bit. I'm ZoRoNaX, a developer/reverse engineerer/beta collector and I'm active on some boards. Some things in the short list of things I've reverse engineerd are the Windows Longhorn Install.WIM file and the MSN Messenger P2P Protocol.

That's all about me, now we get back to the topic.

I managed to install the Microsoft .NET Framework in Windows PE ripped from the Windows Longhorn 4053 Setup. I took some screenshots, which I will describe later.

Screenshot #1:

The boot screen, I hacked the logo a bit, because I didn't liked the original Windows Logo on it.

Screenshot #2:

Here we see the .NET Framework folder, and as you can see the version of the .NET Framework is v1.1.4322.

Screenshot #3:

And finally we see an .NET application written in C# which displays the Operating System Information and the time. We also see the Windows Version in it, which is 6.0.4053.0.

The source code for the C# Operating System Information application can be downloaded here.

The only thing which isn't working right (yet) is that the compiler can't access some files yet if you compile source code, but I'll post a guide on how to do this soon, I'm a busy man

That's all, have fun!

ZoRoNaX

PS: I'm not the one where CuBie was talking about who managed to install the Microsoft .NET Framework.

[scp]

Some things in the short list of things I've reverse engineerd are the Windows Longhorn Install.WIM file and the MSN Messenger P2P Protocol.

Hi ZoRoNaX, I know its not part oft this topic, but... Are you working on your WIM Dumper for the 405x versions or do you have already a new version?

Thx, SCP

PS: I found a bug (?) in v1.02: If I wan't to extract a .cab from a WIM I only get the first bytes of it, not the whole one.

[gosh]

Do you really need to put your name all over the screenshots? LH4053 had .net framework in a .cab file, i assume you just edited an inf file to install it, right? That's useful you found a way to include .net framework in winpe, but it's not that big of a deal, and you didn't provide any way for anybody to verify you did it so the screenshots are worthless.

-gosh

[ZoRoNaX]

Are you working on your WIM Dumper for the 405x versions

LH4053 had .net framework in a .cab file, i assume you just edited an inf file to install it, right?

@scp: Yes I'm working on it but it will take a while. And thank you for your bug report

@gosh: The files in that cab file are just some of them, not all. So it's a little bit useless for me. And No, I didn't installed them from the INF files (which actually also doesn't exist). But I took the files and the registry entries from the .NET Framework MSI file, added them to the iso and the registry hive files, made a new iso and loaded it.

ZoRoNaX

[Datalore]

Good work, ZoRoNaX! Looks like some cool stuff.

[CuBie]

U got a tutorial for us Zoronax? I havent been playing around with pe much for like a month or so, coz of my school xams, but i need to get the .net framework running for when i continue work on WPE OSI (WindowsPE Operating System Installer)...

Thanks

Chris.

[adivekar]

Hi Zoronax,

I was wondering if you could answer some of the following questions I have (and I am a newbie to PE):

1) So can you run pretty much any .NET app off your install of .net on PE?

2) I am particularly interested in knowing if I can pretty much run a .NET based full UI/MFC Application using your install on PE. If I have developed this GUI app on regular Win XP will it run identically on PE?

I would really appreciate your help on this.

Thanks,

Abhijit

Please email me: abhijit.divekar at gmail.com