Boot PE from Hard Drive

[grafx1]

can i run (boot) Windows PE from Hard Drive ? How ?

Thank you.

[mats]

Yes you can.

The exact steps are described in winpe.chm which is in the docs directory of the original winpe cd or download.

[n00dles]

And in case you want to get WinPE from Hard drive into RAM, here's a shamelessly self promoting link

Run Windows PE from RAM

This is how I'm remotely deploying servers now... boot remote server off a floppy, dump an image of a disk with PE on it, reboot and run PE from RAM.

[mats]

Nice one n00dles

[stasys44]

There is another topic that is earlier than here, why to create the same?

(For your attention there are useful articles from www.911cd.net forum (I am guest there))

Dr. Hoang posted 14th August

MSFN Forums > Unattended Windows Discussion & Support > Windows PE

>Help in run Bart PE from HD ?!:

quote=xtremee,Jun 21 2005, 12:02 PM]Hi Xtremee,

You could read two newest articles of mine :

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=13087 How to run XPE in hard disk ( different ways for any new bie )

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=13125 Create the real DOS to XPE in another primary partition . You could get rid off the dos PE plugin

I think you make out of it soon. Good luck

Dr Hoang from Vietnam

DrHoang

Regarding the article "How to run XPE in hard disk"

I made another partition for XPE and copied folders and files, renamed files, made this partition primary, hide my partition with Windows XP. (My second HDD with FAT partition FDD does not see?)

But I got error - Cannot find Autocheck and reboot.

[stasys44]

n00dles

Could you share files:

ntldr, ntdetect and ramdisk.sys from a Windows Server 2003 + SP1 source

[DrHoang]

n00dles

Could you share files:

ntldr, ntdetect and ramdisk.sys from a Windows Server 2003 + SP1 source

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Stasys 44.

Send me an E mail, I would like to share you those 3 files you want

You got that error( Cannot find Autocheck and reboot ) because you don't unhide that XPE just created .

To unhide this primary partition, you have to use pqbw.exe( from PM 8 ) to choose XPE and start now. Reboot and you could boot to XPE now after unhiding it.

Dr Hoang

Edited August 24, 2005 by DrHoang

[mats]

Stasys44:

No offence but the main difference is that this is Winpe not barts variant and that matters for many of us who got relations with microsoft since MS want touch bartPe but they will support WiinPE

[stasys44]

Ooops, sory

I saw what i want to see.

Excuse me.

[mats]

According to MS you need to install recovery console to boot PE from boot.ini

Well, there is another way of doing this. i prefer the new ramboot style so that will be used in this example. The iso filename should be max 8.3 according to noodles so i used test1.iso. Ofcourse you can name it whatever you like.

1. Grab a copy of mkbt and nt2peldr from bart

2. make a working ramdisk booting pe iso, place it in c:\ with the name test1.iso

3. copy setupldr.bin from a server2003sp1 disc to c:\peldr

4. run mkbt -c -x c: c:\peboot.bin

5. run nt2peldr c:\peboot.bin

6. Edit boot.ini and add a line

c:\peboot.bin="PE From ram"

7. Create a winnt.sif file with the following in it

[setupData]

BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"

BootPath = "\i386\System32\"

OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=test1.iso"

Architecture = "i386"

Reboot the system and enjoy

[rnsavage]

Tried both the n00dles approach and mats, and get the cursor flashing on boot, rather than booting my winpe.iso image

Used WinPE supplied with Embedded Studio, and created an ISO image using Barts BCD process, with the ramdisk.sys from Windows 2003 SP1 source.

Have managed to get WinPE dual-booting using the bootsect.dat file, but this will be no use in the environment I am creating.

I have got legacy hardware that does not have External USB boot (and does not have an internal CD-ROM). I will not have the option of PXE boot into WinPE.

The only thing I have is a floppy drive, which I can get to see the External USB DVD-ROM, but you cannot get WinPE to then boot (as there is no run EXE you can run from DOS to kick of the WinPE startup!). The only way I could see is to copy a Ghost image across to the harddrive which contained WinPE running in a RamDrive.

Does anybody have any ideas why my WinPE ISO would not boot? Can anybody think of a better way?

Rick

[mats]

If you can build an image from server 2003 with pe2005 and then try my version. It's still in our labs but it is working on about ten diffrent systems so far

[1993]

You mean an external HD? USB?

[rnsavage]

Trying both external USB CD-ROM (with no BIOS boot)

or copying the ISO to the harddrive (internal IDE)

Rick

[mats]

Internal ide with a 2003 image works. I deployed a few yesterday. Now got a script that will install pe on the remote machine. Add pe to boot ini.

When i want to reinstall that system i just run a script that changes boot.ini and reboots the system into pe. my Pe image will then reinstall the system