8 replies to this topic

[lianzi2000]

Anyone have dug deep into Win10PE yet?

 

After a quite a while of clueless living started to try create some script to make Win10PE, but encountered problem immediately (I have previous experience building working Win7PE). My script makes working booting ISO if I copy the ORIGINAL winpe.wim to ISORoot\Sources\boot.wim. However, if I expand the winpe.wim somewhere (say, WimRoot) then, without touching anything, use dism to capture it to ISORoot\Sources\boot.wim, the final ISO won't boot. I see the boot manager menu, but when choose to boot winPE, the computer hang with a blank screen. Below is the command line I use to capture it:

 

dism /Capture-Image /ImageFile:"ISORoot\Sources\boot.wim" /CaptureDir:"WimRoot" /Name:"Original PE" /Description:"Test Capturing with DISM" /Bootable

 

Is there anything wrong in it? The capture went through smoothly without any hiccup. Everything seems fine except the image won't boot.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

lianzi2000

[TheHive]

Do a google "Win10PE SE" and you will find the type of research project youre looking for.

 

or you can use an alternative

 

WinToUSB - EasyUEFI
http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/

 

Starting from version 2.0, you can clone current Windows OS installation (Windows 7 or later) to a USB drive as a Windows To Go Workspace. ... Creation of Windows To Go from an ISO/WIM/ESD/SWM image file or CD/DVD drive. Clone an existing Windows OS (Windows 7 or later) to a USB Drive

Free version

Create Windows To Go Workspace from an ISO file
Create Windows To Go Workspace from a CD/DVD drive
Create Windows To Go Workspace on a Non-Certified Windows To Go USB Drive
Create VHD-based/VHDX-based Windows To Go Workspace
  Clone current Windows OS (Non-Enterprise Edition of Windows 10/8.1/8/7) to a USB drive as a Windows To Go Workspace

 

[noel]

@lianzi2000,

I don't know how you expand the file boot.wim.

I use 'all the day' dism /mount-wim and /unmount-wim for creating my winpe with 'microwinpebuilder' and i never get issue.

why using /capture-image  with boot.wim?

[flyboytim]

I think that there's something not quite right about the Windows 10 WinPEs.

 

I think it is by design, and intended to make older hardware fail more easily during setup - thus enforcing a requirement to upgrade hardware to leave behind Legacy versions of Windows - one reason I have to believe that is that there seems to be inflation if the shared system memory in both Windows 10 and Windows 10 WinPE compared to identical adapter allocation in Windows 8.1 - for instance, Windows 10 allocates 1 GB of system RAM, whereas Windows 8 & 8PE allocates only 256MB. Surely this is excessive, at least during Setup?

 

One problem that I notice is lack of ACPI support for older chipsets, leading to something I haven't seen commonly since 20 years ago - IRQ conflicts. However, Windows is so resilient now, it rarely results in the BSODs of old, but in CPUs running at 100%, handling interrupts, overheating the CPUs, and slowing systems to a crawl.

 

Hence the phenomenon of "32% overall, 6% installing drivers" slowdown or hangs during upgrades - and because these setups are not subject to WER and a failed install leads to a rollback if you are lucky, or a brick if you are not - telemetry never gets back to MS - because the system is just bunged up with system interrupts, and no network drivers can phone home! 

 

Fortunately at this point you can use Shift F10 to get to the console and run Taskmgr to see what's going on.

 

I think that one possible way forward is to replace all Windows 10 "minwins" - WinPE, etc., in the setup ISO with windows 8 versions, or use the Windows 8 WAIK to modify the Windows 10 setup, but I don't know what the experts here would think of that?

 

You can open boot.wim using 7-zip - it even opens ESDs now - latest version 15.14

Edited by flyboytim, 03 March 2016 - 12:53 PM.

[pscEx]

WinToUSB - EasyUEFI
http://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/

 

I'm not very sure about the seriousity (or real world acceptance) of this side.

 

I have the question whether the app can clone XP too.

But there is no link on the page where I can ask.

In German right there are at least the links IMPRESSUM and (optionally) CONTACT recommended.

 

Here there are only links to twitter, facebook, google+.

 

They appearently assume that all the world is member in at least one of these unnecessary  social networks.

At least for me and maybe millions of other serious programmers this necessarity is not applied!

 

In spite the product seems to be (untested, from the description) excellent, for me the supplyer is not a real trustable professional.

 

Peter

[Wonko the Sane]

In spite the product seems to be (untested, from the description) excellent, for me the supplyer is not a real trustable professional.

Just like a good half to 3/4 of software developers/products you can find on the net, BTW.
  
The company (just for the record) is China based (or at least the site is registered in China through a Chinese "Whois Privacy" Service)

 

The good guys over there have anyway a forum (where you can ask your questions alright):
http://www.easyuefi....splay.php?fid=1

 

 

Wonko

[lianzi2000]

@lianzi2000,

I don't know how you expand the file boot.wim.

I use 'all the day' dism /mount-wim and /unmount-wim for creating my winpe with 'microwinpebuilder' and i never get issue.

why using /capture-image  with boot.wim?

Actually I found out what happened, anyone correct me if it was not the case:

 

Windows system, PE or not, intend to have very long file name ("strong named", such as those under \Windows\WinSxS) and deep directory structures. If I expand the winpe.wim under an "already-deep" location, in my case, it's "C:\Users\xxxxxx\PEProjects\PEImage", then chances are some files with their full path in the image will exceed the maximum length allowed by the file system (NTFS), in such case the captured boot.wim won't boot: After the loading animation (bootres.dll), it just hangs there with a black screen, no BSOD, no anything. So when I dedicated a drive letter to do the work and expand the image to F:\PEImage, everything is fine. Doesn't matter how you expand it, I can use dism mount-wim or imagex mount, or even 7z x, everything works with F:\PEImage.

[Wonko the Sane]

Only to be picky , what you experienced is not "NTFS related", but rather "Windows API related", NTFS in itself supports up to 32 K length of path.:

https://msdn.microso...5).aspx#maxpath

http://blog.codingho...ng-is-too-long/

 

 

Wonko

[lianzi2000]

Only to be picky , what you experienced is not "NTFS related", but rather "Windows API related", NTFS in itself supports up to 32 K length of path.:

https://msdn.microso...5).aspx#maxpath

http://blog.codingho...ng-is-too-long/

 

 

Wonko

I see. Thanks so much!

 

lianzi2000