ubernerd Posted December 8, 2006 Share Posted December 8, 2006 I have a working PXE setup where I can boot several different types of images, Floppy, Altiris and WinPE x.xThe only thing I cannot figure out is how to handle more than one WinPE 2.0 image, I need to be able to select between different WinPE wim files to handle both x86 and amd64. Has anyone found a way to change to name of the boot folder for the wim file ? This would enable me to select different wim files to be loaded. I have tried to alter the path specified in the BCD store included in my PXE setup both it seems that someone (MS) hardcoded the path. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted December 9, 2006 Share Posted December 9, 2006 You don't need to do that - simply create 2 boot images pointing to the proper boot.wim (one pointing to the boot.wim from the x86 CD and one pointing to the boot.wim from the x64 CD), and name them something different (obviously). When pxeboot.exe is called (and assuming you've run the command "wdsutil /set-server /architecturediscovery:yes" on the RIS server and restarted the services), it should give you both options by default on x64 machines - x86 machines will still only see the x86 boot PE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubernerd Posted December 9, 2006 Author Share Posted December 9, 2006 You don't need to do that - simply create 2 boot images pointing to the proper boot.wim (one pointing to the boot.wim from the x86 CD and one pointing to the boot.wim from the x64 CD), and name them something different (obviously). When pxeboot.exe is called (and assuming you've run the command "wdsutil /set-server /architecturediscovery:yes" on the RIS server and restarted the services), it should give you both options by default on x64 machines - x86 machines will still only see the x86 boot PE.It works just fine using WDS, but the thing is ... I'm not using WDS, I'm using a PXE server built using a TFTP server and a PXE bootloader we developed in-house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted December 9, 2006 Share Posted December 9, 2006 You might want to post this in the WinPE section of the forum, as I'm not sure how your in-house application works. But, maybe I can help if you answer a few questions:1. Does your PXE bootloader do hardware type detection on load?2. If you rename the boot.wim file for each architecture to something different, would you be able to add them to your PXE server as separate images?I'm not sure you can change the boot folder path in the .wim, so you may be out of luck. See what people say in the WinPE section, though, before giving up . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubernerd Posted December 9, 2006 Author Share Posted December 9, 2006 You might want to post this in the WinPE section of the forum, as I'm not sure how your in-house application works. But, maybe I can help if you answer a few questions:1. Does your PXE bootloader do hardware type detection on load?2. If you rename the boot.wim file for each architecture to something different, would you be able to add them to your PXE server as separate images?I'm not sure you can change the boot folder path in the .wim, so you may be out of luck. See what people say in the WinPE section, though, before giving up .I think I'll do just that ... But first I'll answer your questions1. No the bootloader only provides a list of images to boot from, and by loading pxeboot.n12 we boot into a WinPE wim image, this however requires that the wim file and the supporting BCD store is placed in a TFTP subfolder called boot otherwise it wont fly. I have even tried to change the paths referenced in the BCD store, with out any luck.2. My wim files can be called anything, but I can only have one as the BCD related to my wim file, MUST reside in a folder called boot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted December 10, 2006 Share Posted December 10, 2006 Hopefully someone there can help, but one other question I had was is there a specific reason to boot to x64 WinPE? I know there are some limitations when loading up Vista, but it should be OK for installing almost any other OS (or at least getting files down to the drive to continue install). What produces the need for x64 PE for you? Just very curious... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bj-kaiser Posted December 10, 2006 Share Posted December 10, 2006 haven't tried it yet, since it took me enough time to get the config for one boot option together. But why not just create another boot option in the BCD? Should be possible or am I wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ubernerd Posted December 11, 2006 Author Share Posted December 11, 2006 Hopefully someone there can help, but one other question I had was is there a specific reason to boot to x64 WinPE? I know there are some limitations when loading up Vista, but it should be OK for installing almost any other OS (or at least getting files down to the drive to continue install). What produces the need for x64 PE for you? Just very curious... Primary reason is that I want to be able to install an unattend Vista x64 which cannot be done from a x86 WinPE (at least not as far as I know)haven't tried it yet, since it took me enough time to get the config for one boot option together. But why not just create another boot option in the BCD? Should be possible or am I wrong?I would image that you are right, but I want to limit the selections to one menu instead of several different menues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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