PE2005 in WIM format working with Vista bootloader

[Albuquerque]

Quick update/rant: what is it with Microsoft and their WIM versioning? The 5308 ximage is on the Feb CTP disc, but it's not able to mount the 5308 boot.wim or install.wim. What gives?? Grr... I'm stuck having to "apply" the entire package on a and burn up untold gigs of space. Why can't I just mount the damned thing?

/rant

Edited February 24, 2006 by Albuquerque

[fizban2]

where did you find ximage on the DVD?? looked in all the folders...

[Albuquerque]

XIMAGE, the associated DLLs and the INF is on the February driver CTP disc here: \wdk automated deployment tools\i386\

You'll also need to copy xmlflt or something like that from the Vista install DVD under Sources. I threw it in my Windows\System32 folder just like the previous version.

[campbrs]

Here's what I did to get past the OS loader:

Step 1. I built a Harddisk bootable WinPE2005 File structure based on the instructions

Step 2. I copied a few files from the Vista winPE WIM file into the WinPE2005 system32 folder

- ximage /mount e:\data\mount "E:\data\vista testing\test\boot\winpelhe.wim" 2

- copy system32\winload.exe from the Vista CD to system32\winload.exe

- copy system32\wininit.exe from the Vista CD to system32\wininit.exe

Step 3. I modified the WinPE2005 Setup Hiv and added in the SystemPrefix Binary Value to the "Setup" Key under the root of the Hiv (I used the Windows 2003 value of 6f 10 00 00 00 c0 43 ac)

Step 4. I copied the on the WinPE2005 Setup Hiv into the config folder (as this is where the new loader is looking for it)

- copy system32\setupreg.hiv from the WinPE2005 image to system32\config\SYSTEM in the WINPE2005 image

- copy system32\setupreg.hiv.log from the WinPE2005 image to system32\config\SYSTEM.LOG in the WINPE2005 image

Step 5. I copied two files that the new loader references differently as follows on the WinPE2005 Path

- copy system32\ntoskrnl.exe to system32\ntkrnlup.exe

- copy system32\hal.dll to system32\halstnd.dll

Step 6. Build a bootable WIM out of the WinPE2005 Path

- ximage /compress maximum /capture E:\data\unattend\winpe2005_hdboot "E:\data\vista testing\test\boot\wp2005ct.wim" "sytembuild"

- ximage /boot "E:\data\vista testing\test\boot\wp2005ct.wim" 1

Step 7. Modify the Boot INI on the Boot CD as follows:

[boot loader]

timeout=20

default=ramdisk(0)\MININT

[operating systems]

ramdisk(0)\MININT="WinPE 2005 WIM" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /DETECTHAL /MININT /rdpath=multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)\boot\wp2005ct.wim /RDSDIHDRPATH=multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)\boot\boot.sdi /USENEWLOADER /KERNEL=ntoskrnl.exe

And thats where I got stuck with the setupdd.sys error - I probably went a little too far with the hacking though

I have attached a screen shot of the error

[fujianabc]

In my view, you should first try to boot traditional winpe 2005 from a hard disk partition (not in wim) by bootmgr.

If you can successfully boot winpe 2005 by bootmgr, then try to compress the winpe to a wim and boot it.

[campbrs]

FWIW - I used the same WINPE2005 build to boot to a harddisk before I compressed to WIM.

[zpashaz]

There is a special GUID that is used in vista bootmgr named {legacy} that is designed to boot pre-vista OS like XP. You can see an example by typing BCDEDIT /? ID. If you are using dual boot bitween vista and xp, through BCDEDIT you can see {legacy} entry to boot xp. Now, that {legacy} entry is quiet shorter that of vista, and i have no idea if it would accept ramdisk as a device option.

Another option would be vista bootmgr after uncompressing wim into ramdisk would pas onto another boot sector , like bootsect.bin or something, but as well ihave no idea if bootmgr is able to do that. I hopr there is somebody who is savy in that whole bootmgr stuff could clarify me on theses thoughts.

[Albuquerque]

After a LONG involved process with this, I eventually gave up. Something breaks in the transition between loading the WIM into ram and handing that off to the underlying OS. I could push and pull in different places to make it break at varying points, but never could get anywhere with it.

Besides, the Vista PE load has a LOAD of items that can be removed it seems; I'm getting functional Vista PE images that are far smaller (WIM size versus SDI size) than the WinPE 2005 image I was fighting to pare down.

[zpashaz]

I'm almost giving up on it as well. I have a coulple of questions though.

how do i get rid of that slowness in command prompt?

what i could delete from the image to slim it down, just to keep networking?

thnx in advance