It's worth messing with to understand the hell you'll be dealing with soon. It will be truly worth it when it is part of Vista when it's a fully packaged product. Also I suggest vmware. I have never had any luck with Virtual PC and others tend to report bizarre problems with it. I have never had a problem with vmware.

Has anyone been able to make this work using Vista Build 5342?

so scp how did u get explorer working ? im using 5270 and the corresponding ximage.

Long time ago, I must look at it again. But maybe this week I do it with the current build.

OK, first part of using PE from 5342 is done.

1. Requirements for your (maybe virtual) PC:

You need at least 256MB of RAM

Create one empty partition with at least 8 GB space

Create a second smaller empty partition with at least 4 GB space

2. Install Windows 2000 or XP on the first partition, format the second

3. Run Vista Setup within Windows 2000 or XP, select first partition as target

4. Don't let Setup reboot! Insert a bootdisk or CD-ROM

5. Now you can save the Windows PE files and folders to another location:

$WINDOWS.~BT

boot

$bootdrive$

$DRVLTR$

$dwnlvldrive$

boot.ini

bootmgr

(arcldr.exe)

(arcsetup.exe)

(NTDETECT.COM)

(NTLDR)

6. Copy folders "boot" and "efi" and

files "bootmgr" and "bootmgr.efi"

from Vista DVD into "$WINDOWS.~BT"

7. Get the boot sector from Vista DVD

8. Copy bcdedit.exe from $WINDOWS.~BT\Windows\system32 to some other folder

9. In command-line run

bcdedit /store E:\LH5342\$WINDOWS.~BT\boot\bcd /set {default} device BOOT

bcdedit /store E:\LH5342\$WINDOWS.~BT\boot\bcd /set {default} osdevice BOOT

where you must replace "E:\LH5342\$WINDOWS.~BT" with your own location of $WINDOWS.~BT

10. Rename Setup.exe and Sources\Setup.exe to Setuq.exe or delete them

11. Burn $WINDOWS.~BT onto CD or DVD

12. The contents of the CD should now look like this:

boot
efi
Program Files
ProgramData
Sources
Users
Windows

autorun.inf
bootmgr
bootmgr.efi
readme.htm
readme.rtf
setuq.exe

Update: Works also for Beta 2 (Build 5384)

Here is a little script for steps 8 to 10:

prepwpe.cmd

@echo off
set CDROOT=E:\LH5384\$WINDOWS.~BT\

If not exist %~dp0bcdedit.exe copy %CDROOT%Windows\system32\bcdedit.exe %~dp0

bcdedit /store %CDROOT%boot\bcd /set {default} device BOOT
bcdedit /store %CDROOT%boot\bcd /set {default} osdevice BOOT

bcdedit /store %CDROOT%boot\bcd /set {default} path \windows\system32\winload.exe
bcdedit /store %CDROOT%boot\bcd /set {default} systemroot \windows

bcdedit /store %CDROOT%boot\bcd /set {default} winpe yes
bcdedit /store %CDROOT%boot\bcd /set {default} detecthal yes

If exist %CDROOT%Setup.exe ren %CDROOT%Setup.exe Setuq.exe
If exist %CDROOT%Sources\Setup.exe ren %CDROOT%Sources\Setup.exe Setuq.exe

If you want to get Recovery options from command-line, run X:\Sources\Recovery\recenv.exe

Edited October 10, 200619 yr by scp

Also works for Vista RC1 (5600), with some strange side effect: The buttons in the upper right corner do not contain Symbols and some Text in a window is not displayed. Also wpeinit.exe takes long time to load.

Remember winload.exe and winresume.exe is stored in system32 and the correspondending .mui files are in the sub folder of your language (e.g. system32\de-DE).

If you directly manipulatie the boot.wim image it works.

PS: Updated script above with some bcdedit lines.

Edited October 10, 200619 yr by scp