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Windows 7 PE drivers?


Xenithar

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Hello! I have built a few Windows 7 PE images to use for maintenance reasons on legally licensed versions of Windows. I do things like run MyDefrag to defragment things which cannot be defragmented while Windows is running, such as registry files or pagefiles. Also things like resetting passwords on systems which are not on a domain. Make_PE3 has been great for this, but I do run into the occasional system which has unsupported hardware. To this end I have been trying to add drivers to the image to create a more compatible PE image. I downloaded the chipset and mas storage driver-packs, as well a** all three video and the audio, LAN, and WLAN packs from driverpacks.net as noted in the text files. However, if I place them all into the "PE3_mod/WIN7_drivers/x86" folder, the system hangs at "Windows is loading files" when booting the image on a real system or in VirtualBox.

So, how do I do this? Is it possible to do chipset and mass storage with dism, and have the others load during PE startup? I basically would like to have an image I can do maintenance with on licensed systems. I am trying to do this via the media option so I may test audio on systems where it does not work in the system which is installed. Is this possible? I did this with Windows XP. In fact I have an XP image on USB and CD which has loads of chipset, audio, video (even nVidia and ATI), and LAN support. However, this is aging and since most of our clients use 7, we would like to do this with 7, if possible.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

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Chipset drivers aren't needed. I've only added LAN and mass storage drivers to PE.

I do not agree with the approach of just adding everything you can find into an image. I would only add what is required by the hardware you are servicing.

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See the problem of adding only what I am servicing is kind of hard. We have people bring us everything from outdated P4 systems to AMD, SiS, VIA, Intel, etc. The only possible way I could do what you are suggesting would be to take in a system, see what is in it, and create an image for that system. Right now I have three laptops on my bench. Two Intel and one AMD. Turion, Centrino Duo, and Pentium D. One is Dell, one is HP, one is Acer. See how difficult it would be?

With that said, how about video, LAN, WLAN, and mass storage? What about audio? In my custom XP images I would place the drivers in a folder and I had only basic drivers when booting. Once in, I could run a script which loaded any other drivers from said folder. Is that possible here? How would you setup a general use image like this if you were in my boots?

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What is the purpose to add a video or sound driver to WinPE?

If you don't want the driver actually in the image, you can run it manually with drvload. I use this for testing, or as a stop-gap until the actual boot image is updated.

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Is it possible to use drvload and allow it to search sub-directories also? If so, that may work for my needs.

I need video drivers so that when I do maintenance that takes a while, such as running MyDefrag from PE to get a full defragmentation, the video cards don't run wide-open. ATI is bad for this, but it affects some nVidia cards also. Once the driver loads, it slows the card down and the fans spin slower, etc.

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I have a question. I have been testing this with my flash drive and GRUB. It works fine this way. However, if I burn 7pe_x86_M.iso to CD (377MiB) it will not boot and instead complains about BOOTMGR missing. Is there something else I need to do to be able to put this on CD/DVD media?

As for the drivers, I almost have it perfect. I have chipset (needed for MANY things like USB), LAN, WLAN, and mass storage integrated. This works GREAT on the laptops we tested with. The last hurdle is audio and video. I do not mind scripting drvload, but won't it require a reboot when installing ATI or nVidia drivers?

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8 hours ago, Xenithar said:

I have a question. I have been testing this with my flash drive and GRUB. It works fine this way. However, if I burn 7pe_x86_M.iso to CD (377MiB) it will not boot and instead complains about BOOTMGR missing. Is there something else I need to do to be able to put this on CD/DVD media?

As for the drivers, I almost have it perfect. I have chipset (needed for MANY things like USB), LAN, WLAN, and mass storage integrated. This works GREAT on the laptops we tested with. The last hurdle is audio and video. I do not mind scripting drvload, but won't it require a reboot when installing ATI or nVidia drivers?

Complains HOW exactly?

I mean which exact error message do you get?

If it comes from a grub4dos, it will be just a matter of changing (or adding) a suitable menu.lst, if it comes from the CD bootsector that finds not the BOOTMGR, it may be an actual missing BOOTMGR file or having it in the "wrong" path.

jaclaz
 

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It said BOOTMGR was missing. I assume this means that the ISO image is not bootable by default. Is this correct? If so, how do I make a bootable one? I am not using GRUB or anything. My thought process is that I make the ISO, burn it, and use it.

*UPDATE*

I just saw the "CD" checkbox at the bottom of the GUI. I checked it and left everything else the same. It errors out with that checked, claiming it cannot find "NETFXSB10.exe". It works fine without the CD checkbox checked though. Is this a bug?

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I tried again and it worked, but when I burned it to disc I got "CDBOOT: Couldn't find BOOTMGR". This seems a tad too difficult for such a simple thing. I must be overcomplicating this. How do I make this thing boot from CD/DVD? I used the ISO image in the MULTI/images folder since I had the CD checkbox enabled this time. What am I doing wrong?

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Cannot say.

The nice programs by Wimb have become very complex and it is easy to get a "wrong" setting or doing the "wrong thing (it is the effect of being able to make too many things, once you learn how to use those programs they are exceptionally good, but they are confusing initially).


The CDboot: Couldn't find BOOTMGR comes from the "standard" MS etfsboot.com, see:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172655-strange-or-odd-multi-or-single-boot-cddvd-el-torito-images/
It may mean that a file called BOOTMGR does not exist in the root of the .iso, but it could also come from some other error, are you sure you are using the "right" .iso?
Try burning the MULTI-31-03-2016.iso in \Make_PE3\MULTI_ISO\ instead.

How EXACTLY are you "burning" the .iso to physical CD/DVD?


jaclaz
 

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My setup is a tad more advanced than a normal Joe's. I run Gentoo GNU/Linux on my systems and run Win 7 Pro 64bit in VirtualBox. This is where I create my PE3 stuff. I use a REAL Win 7 Pro 32bit OEM disc as the source. It has SP1 integrated. This is a MS disc, not home-brew.

Now, once the image is created, I copy it to a virtual network share which in reality is a folder on the host OS. I then exit 7 and burn the ISO using K3B. It burns official media just fine, so it shouldn't be an issue.

I will try the multi ISO tonight or tomorrow and post the results.

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Alright, I burned the multi_iso image and it boots to GRUB4DOS, but I only have MemTest, Plop, NTLDR boot for XP/2K, and BOOTMGR for Vista/7/8. No option to go into my PE environment. Is it really this difficult to simply make a CD bootable ISO with my stuff on it? It was cake with XP.

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