WinPE + Installation from WIM

[bilemke]

I've got the boot.ini as an excluded file for WIM generation. So it, along with hiberfil.sys, pagefile.sys, "System Volume Information" are not included when building the WIM. I copy/pasted from the WAIK docs, so if you've got them lying around, you'll find the wimscript.ini listed there.

Ah, figured as much.. I guess I just wont exclude it and I will be fine.. Seeing as boot ini has been the same for every machine I have installed xp on to this date... Always first partition of first drive in system.. Going to give this a try tonight.. Then I can manipulate the post-text/pre-gui setup files before making a wim and essentially bypass the need for OEM files and such.. And, not have to integrate raid drivers into the text setup portion, just put then on the drive to be wim'ed and point windows to the location in the registry.

If only someone would make a wim file editor for winodws liek there once was for the older wim formats in early longhorn bulds..

[getwired]

XImage is the WIM file editor - it just hasn't been made available for every build that has come out. It will probably be released again at Beta 2.

[bilemke]

XImage is the WIM file editor - it just hasn't been made available for every build that has come out. It will probably be released again at Beta 2.

True.. As far as I can see it can only add images and remove images.. I was hoping for a more usefull editor like being able to see and manipulate the files in the image files. More like editing a disk image (iso or otherwise) with WinImage, WinIso, UltraIso, etc...

This would make manipulation very easy instead of having to make a working hd partition and then imaging it each time a change is desired.

[Wraith]

The WIM filter driver that comes with the WAIK allows you to mount a WIM file to a directory, copy files in, edit existing files, and then commit any changes you make to the existing WIM, without having to rebuild the WIM from scratch.

Can't really get any easier, can it?

[Bilou_Gateux]

mbrfix did fix it - the only "problem" now is the lack of a boot.ini.

Windows still boots, just there's an error for 2 seconds at the start.

As long as the partition is marked as active, and the MBR is correct, it should work fine.

I never tested the diskpart + clean scenario, as getwired said, but this way seems to work.

I've posted my "findings" on my site:

http://www.voidfx.com/FX/Random:WIM_Installation

Many thanks for the hard work and documenting your "findings"

You'll need to go find mbrfix, I forget the URL where I found it.

you can now update your site with the link for mbrfix.exe

MbrFix.exe Developed by Kåre Smith, 21. april 2005

[Wraith]

I'll update it in the next day or two.

Finishing my thesis today.... after that, I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Wraith]

Okay, well I've been writing a HD partitioner/formatter... progress is going along nicely.

I've dropped the thought of wrapping diskpart -- it's a lot easier to do them using normal Win32 funcs. At the moment, read support of disk and partition information is completely functional, can tell which disks exist, what partitions exist, etc. etc., and it seems like it'll be fairly trivial modifying that information in order to create stuff.

I'll be working on it the next couple of days, will post new info in the near future.

EDIT

Looks like I might be able to fix the MBR thing too. Seems simple enough to write the NT bootloader into it. We'll see how things go...

EDIT2

Creating partitions and formatting is working great. Looks fairly promising at this point in time.

Edited November 2, 2005 by Wraith

[bilemke]

Sweet.. I am going to be watching this thread daily for a while now..

Please keep up your reaserch.. And thank you for sharing your ongoing findings.

[Wraith]

Work is still progressing, albeit slowly.

It'll be a week or so before I have anything that's release-worthy.

I'm in the process of writing an XML parser for XPlode, and the same parser is going to be used for this, so it needs to be done before anything else.

[bilemke]

Work is still progressing, albeit slowly.

It'll be a week or so before I have anything that's release-worthy.

I'm in the process of writing an XML parser for XPlode, and the same parser is going to be used for this, so it needs to be done before anything else.

Sweet.. Access to xplode will be cool. BTW, new avatar I see..

[Wraith]

Is anybody able to give the method a test? I've been testing in VM's and it has worked fine, but when I've gone through the method manually on a real comp, I get BSOD's on the first reboot after applying the WIM.

Someone else tried it so far?

Edited November 9, 2005 by Wraith

[bilemke]

Is anybody able to give the method a test? I've been testing in VM's and it has worked fine, but when I've gone through the method manually on a real comp, I get BSOD's on the first reboot after applying the WIM.

Someone else tried it so far?

I will see if I can dig out a generic Intel 810 chipset P3 Dell I got at my shop today and see if I can give it a go.. Still need to take the time to do a partial windows isntall and make a wim image of it yet.. So.... Might take a while. Then will try to apply it to a clean drive again.

Update: One note, my plans were to not use sysprep, but to start a windows setup process and wim image it right after the first reboot of the text mode portion of setup.. I feel I can do all the manipulation I need from that point.. This way I think it might let me use the image for almost any machine given the right scsi/raid drivers.. Otherwise, I think I would run in to too many issues trying to use it on machines with different bootable disk/controller types (even with sysprep).

Edited November 10, 2005 by bilemke

[bilemke]

Well... I have been playing and have had no problems yet.. Atleast not like the one you described. Problem I am having is imaging it at the point where I wanted to is not very practical... Windows setup will still want a cd for some of the isntall in one scenario. In the other, it wont need the cd, but to accomplish this I need all (or atleast some more) of the setup files from i386 folder of a setup cd to be in the hard drive (wim) image, which adds to the size of the image and takes more space on the hard drive later.

I will get to playing again later.. Need to take care of my car (hit a a deer, or more like the deer hit me).

[Metzen]

Is anybody able to give the method a test? I've been testing in VM's and it has worked fine, but when I've gone through the method manually on a real comp, I get BSOD's on the first reboot after applying the WIM.

Someone else tried it so far?

I've seen the same thing with GHOST, etc. Which isn't surprising since this is "imaging" through and through.

GUI mode setup IS platform discriminate based on your hardware. TEXTMODE setup is platform indiscriminate. TEXTMODE setup configures some basic hardware for GUI mode setup and if you try to change (enough) hardware AFTER recording the image at the GUI mode setup stage, it may not work. Naturally, it shouldn't have any problem with imaging to similar hardware. You will still need to image at TEXTMODE setup for XP. I do not believe Vista has this limitation, however (though we will see in the coming months...)

[Wraith]

Most times I've sysprep'ed and imaged seem to fail.

Most times I've gone through textmode only and imaged seem to work.

Looks like I might be going through that method - although it takes a lot longer than a pre-sysprep'ed image, it seems to work all the time.

I've been busy of late so I haven't been able to follow up on the creation of the program, I get the feeling that using WIM's might be a problem though. Apparently the format in LH 5231 is different than the ones usable by the WAIK. So it looks like MS is playing around with the format, might not be a good idea to use it until it's set in stone.