Network drivers, ramdisk drivers, et and all

[anusha.anush]

Hi all,

I created a plain vanila WinPE boot CD. Works fine until I try to customize it for having network connectivity and adding a ramdisk. Here are the details:

1. Network connectivity: I have the latest Intel Gigabit card. So here is what I did.

a. Pulled out the drivers for the card and added the driver sys and inf entries to the "Extra.inf" in the i386 folder.

b. Added the actual sys and inf files to the i386 directory

c. Added "netcfg -winpe" to startnet.cmd to start TCP/IP services.

d. To winbom.ini, added [WinPE.Net] with IPConfig=DHCP and StartNET=Yes

After all this, issuing ipconfig results in "An internal error occured. The requested service is not supported. Additional information: Unable to query host name" error. Anything that I'm missing?

2. Ramdisk creation:

a. Obtained the ramdisk drivers from the microsoft website: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q257405/

b. Added entries to Extra.inf

c. Added driver sys and inf files to i386 directory

The ramdisk does not get created. Anyone knows why?

I also tried following the instructions on this MSFN post: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showto...t=0entry78742

I did everything mentioned in this post, expect adding entries to a dosnet.inf, because there is no such file in my directory tree. Is this required? If yes, where is the file location, what is it meant for and what is the format of the contents?

Any thoughts/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

-Anusha

[genmud]

I had the same problems with my stuff at first

the problems you are having is because the drivers aren't being installed properly...

I want to know if you have windows pe or BartPE, because there is a bit of difference between the two.

and you say that you are adding them to the i386 directory... please explain further.

[anusha.anush]

Hi genmud,

Thanks for the response.

I'm using Windows PE (not BartPE).

Regarding my directory structure, I have a "pefiles" folder that contains OS files from the Windows XP CD(I use mkimg.cmd for this). I used this microsoft posting to create the winpe iso: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;303891

The pefiles folder contains the i386 folder. I added the inf files in the i386\inf folder and the driver sys files in i386\system32\drivers. Then I create the iso using oscdimg.exe.

What is the procedure that you used to prepare your WinPE iso? It'll be very useful if you could share that information.

Thanks

-Anusha

[campbrs]

I set one up under Windows PE by following the directions in the below link. I also went ahead and recompiled the ramdisk driver per the KB article's suggestions with the suggested changes for Windows XP.

http://tjb.xgameservers.com/WindowsPE.html

Hope this helps,

Richard

[anusha.anush]

hi campbrs,

I followed the instructions on http://tjb.xgameservers.com/WindowsPE.html to create my ramdisk, but doesnt work. Here is what I did as instructed by the link: (Tried it with both Microsoft drivers and Christian's drivers)

Copy RAMDRIVE.SYS to C:\WinPE\DRIVERS

Copy RAMDISK.INF to C:\WinPE\INF

Open Regedit and Export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Ramdisk to C:\WinPE\SFW\SCRIPTS\RAMDISK.REG

Using Load Hive in RegEdit load the C:\WinPE\SetupReg.hiv as HKEY_USERS\SetupRegHiv

Edit C:\WinPE\SFW\SCRIPTS\RAMDISK.REG search and replace HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM for HKEY_USERS\SetupRegHiv and save the file.

Run REGEDIT /S C:\WinPE\SFW\SCRIPTS\RAMDISK.REG (You can delete RAMDISK.REG or keep it)

Using Unload Hive in RegEdit unload HKEY_USERS\SetupRegHiv

The RAMDISK settings should now be in C:\WinPE\SetupReg.hiv

After all this, I make the CD. The ramdisk doesnt get created !!! But after the CD boots, I used regedit to view the entries and the RAMDISK entries are in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Ramdisk. I'm really lost here.

Can someone upload their ramdisk driver .sys and .inf files and instructions on using them?

Thanks

-Anusha

[anusha.anush]

I successfully created the ramdisk using Christiaan's drivers. The only change was that instead of loading the hives in HKEY_USERS (as suggested in http://tjb.xgameservers.com/WindowsPE.html ), I loaded it under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Also, regarding adding network drivers to the image, I used drvinst to insert the driver into the PE image, when it complained about the PE files not being PNP compatable. That made me realise that i needed to have created by image with PNP suport added. So, I recreated my img using /PNP switch in mkimg.cmd and everything else worked like magic!

Thanks for the replies

-Anusha

[aenagy]

I tried the instructions mentioned at http://tjb.xgameservers.com/WindowsPE.html and I get the following error from RegEdit: "Cannot Load SETUPREG.HIV: Error while loading hive.". This is on Windows XP SP2, I am and administrator.

Any idea why this is happening?

Thanks.

[likuidkewl]

I tried the instructions mentioned at http://tjb.xgameservers.com/WindowsPE.html and I get the following error from RegEdit: "Cannot Load SETUPREG.HIV: Error while loading hive.". This is on Windows XP SP2, I am and administrator.

Any idea why this is happening?

Thanks.

Did you try to mount the hives on the same install of the XP, and by that I do not mean version. Because I have found that say if you build your PE from the OPK then, you reformat your drive you will not be able to mount the hives, you will be able to mount them on SP1 but not on SP2 for some reason, MS said that they cannot reproduce this but I know a couple people have. If this is the case you can simply build a new version of PE and copy the hives to the appropriate dir's in your older build after modifying them. HTH