Vista install (ximage?)

[fizban2]

hey all, just trying to dissect the vista DVD, does anyone know how MS is deploying the .wim files? is there another way to deploy them other then ximage? i looked high and low on the DVD for ximage to try and understand how MS has used it to install vista and how they used it to startup the PE section to no avail. if anyone has a found out how they are doing this or how they are loading the .wim files that would be awesome.

[getwired]

The functionality to apply the WIM files lives within the Windows setup code itself. It doesn't use XImage. XImage is available as a part of the WAIK, from Microsoft. I can describe how the PE boot to WIM works, but I'm not sure how it will help you. Are you just trying to familiarize yourself with the infrastructure?

[fizban2]

i have figured that part out (booting throught the .sdi file) but more trying to figure out the structure for the actual PE wim. just trying to get a better understanding of it compared to the 2005 Pe structure

[os2fan2]

The WIM files are archives like huge zip files.

The installation boots a kind of loader, which unzips boot.ini into ram, and then starts that. Win2k3's ramdrv.sys allowed one to load an iso file as a ramdisk, but this is somewhat different, since you can write to the directories as well.

All of the stuff needed to boot, and run winpe, lives in this file, even setup (setup.exe is in the root directory)

Once this is set up, setup then basically unzips the install.wim folder to the system drive, and then runs a post-install config.

You can effectively make a bartpe by adding an extra file (ximage /mountrw), to the boot.wim archive.

Add this file as boot.wim\\windows\system32\winpeshl.exe

[LaunchApp]
AppPath=%SystemRoot%\System32\cmd.exe

You then load to a command prompt, to which you can then launch setup, or do any other kind of fix.

You can even add your own utilities to the boot.wim file, eg file commander, rexx or an editor.

[fizban2]

thanks os2fan2,

but you don't even have to go that far to get the PE to run on its own, just change the boot.ini to point to the boot.wim instead of the install.wim and it will load the pe only.

if you mount the boot.wim you can change the startnet.cmd, no need to make the winpeshl.ini.

[boot loader]

timeout=0

default=ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

ramdisk(0)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Longhorn PE" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /DETECTHAL /MININT /rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)\sources\LHPE.wim /RDSDIHDRPATH=multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)\boot\boot.sdi /USENEWLOADER

[/code}

you can still use the boot.sdi to load the wim just change the name (in this case i changed it from install.wim to lhpe.wim. the Pe will load, if you haven't edited the startnet.cmd it will run a factory -winpe and then load to a command prompt. like you said at this point you could have loaded other software and such to make this more then just a delivery platform