66 replies to this topic

[larioteo]

Are here in this Forum any Clean Projekt without any Wallpapers or something like that.

I can't believe it i only want a stock Windows 7 PE that hasn't any Apps or anything third Party includet, so much work to replace something is not good.

There should be only a stock system, and the Possibility like an App Script Store where the User can download the Applications that he want. Could it be possible to leave any Tools like PEShell Swapper and so on? Only a Clean Build thats what many Users are looking about, and it still doesn't exist anywhere.

The Bad thing is, to build a WinBuilder Project is to hard nowadays. I can remember such time like BartPE wehre i had choose something and it worked everytime.

I tried Win7PE SE there are to many third Party things around, and a Virus in the ShoutdownPE.exe, than i have tried nativeEX_multiPE, but without the newest nightly build it wont work for me.

If anybody could make an easy to use Project with an simply Syntax that everybody unterstand i would be happy.

@Lancelot, Gallapo, Peter, Nuno

Could you forgett the past things happended and make the whole thing in a new way? I cant see any Feature here. I am waiting for the new WinBuilder since a year.... ahhh

[larioteo]

Oh thank you very much and sorry for my bad english

[sbaeder]

Are here in this Forum any Clean Projekt without any Wallpapers or something like that.

In addition to what already posted, it is very easy to turn OFF the wall paper and delest the things you don't want Just use the win7pe_se project as is, and go to the "tweaks/wallpaper" script and select NO WALLPAPER...

Yes, "fighting" is bad all around, and there is always room for improvement, and as shown, it's easy enough to strip out what you don't need, but since everyones needs are different, having flexibility is a good thing...

[Brito]

al_jo, thank you for sharing your project.

Would be nice to see currently available projects to become simpler. If someone is willing to volunteer, let's talk then.

[homes32]

Are here in this Forum any Clean Projekt without any Wallpapers or something like that.

I can't believe it i only want a stock Windows 7 PE that hasn't any Apps or anything third Party includet, so much work to replace something is not good.

There should be only a stock system, and the Possibility like an App Script Store where the User can download the Applications that he want. Could it be possible to leave any Tools like PEShell Swapper and so on? Only a Clean Build thats what many Users are looking about, and it still doesn't exist anywhere.

The Bad thing is, to build a WinBuilder Project is to hard nowadays. I can remember such time like BartPE wehre i had choose something and it worked everytime.

I tried Win7PE SE there are to many third Party things around, and a Virus in the ShoutdownPE.exe, than i have tried nativeEX_multiPE, but without the newest nightly build it wont work for me.

If anybody could make an easy to use Project with an simply Syntax that everybody unterstand i would be happy.

@Lancelot, Gallapo, Peter, Nuno

Could you forgett the past things happended and make the whole thing in a new way? I cant see any Feature here. I am waiting for the new WinBuilder since a year.... ahhh

Win7PE SE is a clean project. It is meant as a base to do exactly like you want: provide you with a base project for you to add your own Apps. only scripts for core/feature functionality are included. and the features you don't want you can uncheck so they are not built. what features do you believe are "3rd party" and unnecessary?

apps can be downloaded in the App Script download area

Also there is no virus in ShutdownPE. I don't write viruses in my software and certainly wouldn't include one in a project I work so hard to keep successful. Get a new antivirus program that doesn't flag industry standard run-times and exe packers as viruses or use a reliable online scanner such as virustotal.com

regards,
Homes32

[Brito]

Project mentioned on weekly newsletter.

[pscEx]

Also there is no virus in ShutdownPE. I don't write viruses in my software and certainly wouldn't include one in a project I work so hard to keep successful. Get a new antivirus program that doesn't flag industry standard run-times and exe packers as viruses or use a reliable online scanner such as virustotal.com

I appreciate your work, and I'm using your ShutDown in nativeEx_multiPE. And here it works great!

Unfortunatelly (some / most / all) virus scanners are stupid and only look for patterns. That's a fact we have to live with.

Peter

[pscEx]

As you are replying in this topic:
Have you tried it?

I do not understand your question.
As I said in my above post, I use Shutdown in nativeEx_multiPE with success.

And clicking the single buttons DO WHAT THEY tell in CAPTION!
Peter

[pscEx]

I answered (quoted) to homes32's post.

I do not think that the initial post of Darijo is restricted to a mini win7pe project.

Where is your problem?

Peter

[pscEx]

Peter

[Arvy]

Nice effort. Seems to need a little more work to fully support x64 setups. In my own case, at least, I had to reboot into a 32-bit OS to run it, but it then built okay using my 64-bit Win7 source. Unlike some others, your inclusion of all the necessary files (imagex.exe, wimgapi.dll, etc.) to work "out of the box" is convenient and appreciated.

Just to second the sentiment expressed earlier, if some people would just work a little bit more cooperatively around here, the end result could surely be a truly fantastic product for the "end user", but I suppose that's asking a lot.

[paraglider]

Yes nice effort. Would be nice if it did not use the same folder as the existing win7pe_se project. That way they can both exist in the same winbuilder project folder.

[Steptoe]

Just to second the sentiment expressed earlier, if some people would just work a little bit more cooperatively around here, the end result could surely be a truly fantastic product for the "end user", but I suppose that's asking a lot.

2x
I wanted something like that a while back...ended up with a little help from a couple cool members with a lot of patence, as Im into restoring old cars and breedin endangered parrots.
I figured out how to open and edit the start menu, copy paste short cuts and copy paste my progs in.
Winbuilder I got lost in. Its like its made by coders who are showing off what they can do, how much they can get it to do, and forgotten the simple needs of most end users...
All I wanted was a base XP type OS network, sound, computer managenent, notepad

This time around there seems a lot of posts supporting the concept

[larioteo]

A part for the english Users and a part for the german Users, cause my english is bed, i hope googe translate would do his job god .

@pscEx

Hallo Peter,

ich finde eure Arbeit sehr sehr gut, jedoch wird es endlich zeit den Weg in einfachere Gewässer zu finden. Dein Projekt gefällt, es ist aber so schwer zu verstehen das ein umsteiger der damals nur BartPE selber erweitert hat, nichts damit anfangen kann. Ich habe es lange veruscht komm einfach ohne eine Anleitung oder bessere Kommentierung nicht dahinter was gerade gemacht wird, sicher gibt es Teile die sich selber erklären, aber was ist mit dem anderem.

Ich hoffe dieses Forum geht irgendwan in Richtung benutzerfreundlichkeit, ich bin beiweitem kein dummer 0815 user der sich mit der Technik nicht auskennt, programmiere selber, nur hat nicht jeder die Zeit, sich alles selber anzueignen, ne implementierte Doku wie und was wäre da sehr hilfreich. Ich meine eine wo ich über den Befehl gehe und ein Beispiel plus empfehlung bekomme, so wie es in vielen sdk's heutzutage üblich ist. Somit könnten viele etwas dazu beitragen, und nicht nur die die das ganze hobbymässig machen, sondern mal kurz nebenbei wenn mal die Zeit gerade dafür da ist.

@All
For an startet as I am, it is not so easy to remove a script and then to get hundrets of errors, that only say the developer of the script something. I don't understand anything, nobody do that, by the first use of an unknown software, and no everybody has enough time to study all komplex Tools on this earth.

As the other thing, a small and effecitv Projekt, is a better way, download time reduced, less scripts in the hirarchy.

A Projekt where a User can press download and select after that the Source, Costumize (Quick) the projekt, and press Build, is the only good way for everyone. Advanced Users can add there needed Scripts on their own, but a user like i, who never worked with that, gets lost with hundrets of scripts and the code behind.

@aj_jo Your Projekt is a dream nothing more than the Minimum nedded to start, so I can add my Apps that i would like to have.

Edited by Darijo, 06 May 2011 - 04:46 AM.

[Steptoe]

The translate is preety crap...but good enought to undersatnd what is being said.
yeah 2 or 3 versions

Or the one version with 3 built so when start one has the option of
basic for those the advanced guys get impatent with ,
meduim, for the above to advance to if need to
and complex where coders can show off how good they are

[tiri]

Nice effort. Seems to need a little more work to fully support x64 setups. In my own case, at least, I had to reboot into a 32-bit OS to run it, but it then built okay using my 64-bit Win7 source. Unlike some others, your inclusion of all the necessary files (imagex.exe, wimgapi.dll, etc.) to work "out of the box" is convenient and appreciated.

What means "need more work to run on x64"? -.- Can you please explain what to attend to run Lighty7PE on x64?

Best regards,
tom.

[Arvy]

What means "need more work to run on x64"? -.- Can you please explain what to attend to run Lighty7PE on x64?

I just meant that, when I tried to run al_jo's project as originally posted in this thread under my Win7x64 setup, it wouldn't run and I had to reboot my system into an older 32-bit Windows OS to make it work. I must admit that I really didn't try very hard to make it work under Win7x64. If I remember correctly, it gave me a error message saying that some required WinBuilder tools were missing for x64 operation.




Okay, thanks, al_jo. I'll download that revised Win7PE64 package and give it another try running under my Win7x64 setup. Probably not today, but I'll definitely follow up here with the results as soon as I can.

Frankly, I have no problem with other WinBuilder packages that provide more (Minimal, Recommended and Complete) options for downloading. But I found that most of them wanted to send me hunting around for additional files (from WAIK, etc.) in order to work. And I'm a very lazy old geezer.

[Arvy]

Follow-up as promised:-- BEAUTIFUL!!! Absolutely beautiful. That last posted Winbuilder project runs perfectly under my Win7x64 setup without needing any driver installations or other additions of any kind.

I didn't actually burn the ISO file, but I copied it and also the WIM (\sources) file to my multiboot USB drive and made the appropriate entries in the Grub4DOS menu.lst file there. It boots fine either way, but only the ISO boot displays the pretty new Windows 7 startup dynamic.

As an added bonus, it runs most of the 32-bit applications that were already installed by other WinBuilder projects on that USB drive, including my favorite text editor (UltraEdit) and file comparator (Beyond Compare) so that I only need to add their shortcuts and context menu items to this Win7PE project. Unfortunately, my Acronis proggies (True Image and Disk Director) will require a little extra work to make them run with an x64 PE build. If anyone has already done that for the 2011 Home editions of Acronis TI and DD, please post a link.

Congrats, al_jo. Very well done!

[bobsobol]

It seems to me that 190meg ISO is too big for what I want.

Honestly, I don't want desktop Windows at all. All I want is the Windows 2000 recovery console to work with new NTFS versions and BCDEdit. If I could start from CMD.com and add a few GNUWin32 tools that would be a great start... anything that can be operated by mouse is a big no-no for me. (I can't script mouse clicks easily) Anything that can be launched from cmd.exe or bash is a big + on a recovery disc, and if I can boot from a floppy, I'm all the happier.

Most of the systems I work don't have optical drives. (no CD or DVD) so my recovery boot options are USB, PXE or Floppy.

Usual tasks are, clear dead profiles, defrag including MFT (I can do that from the command line) delete swap file and hiberfile, edit BCD / MBR, run chkdsk while the normal boot volume is not mounted.

Additional pros are Regln (command line access to off-line registry hives) winlog (to access system event logs from command line) strarc (like tar, but supporting ACLs, ADSs, junctions and reparse points etc) and ability to connect to NFS/ftp/SMB(cfis) shares and recover damaged or deleted files.

That last part is harder to do from command line only, but that's only because the people who make the tools don't seem to know what a useful UI is. (ie, one with switches beginning / or - and no buttons, scrollers, drop-downs, pop-ups, toobars etc. and preferably one whose output can be parsed by grep or sed and passed as input to something else.) XD

GNU nano, is already to complex and limited a UI for most of what I want to do. Hew has enough features to make it worth the guff.

Basically, if I'm in the position where I'm recovering an ailing OS, I want to boot from some remote media and have something like BSDs "Single User Mode". Mac and some Linux distros provide this, and 2K recovery console was a gift from the gods... but it's outdated, and less useful than a DOS 7 / freeDOS boot floppy on modern Windows. (at least I can load NTFS for DOS and HX DOS to run most GNUWin32 tools and access an NTFS drive with that)

Anyone think we can "bum down" a Win7 PE to get rid of everything Common Controls, GDIPlus, WPF, Heck, I'd even kill GDI it's self if I could get away with it. Text mode frame buffer is more than adequate. As is the NT "native mode" that chkdsk & several AV / Defrag tools use to run before the swap file and registry hives are "locked"... but I would need kernel32.dll and user32.dll. :s lol (so... the moment where Win32 starts up, just before the desktop UI is initiated. Which, on normal Windows boot, is exactly the same point. >.<)

[Wonko the Sane]

Someone could create a "phoenix" project from the ashes of this (which however is mostly what bobsobol asks about, though XP based):
http://reboot.pro/3717/

Screenshot (with optional GUI):



It does (for me) what I basically need when recovering a system, it fits in about 25 Mb (including all the GUI apps, the "pure CLI" one should be around 10 Mb.

An alternative (though using a completely different "philosophy") could be the Livista Rescup/Nanovis approach:
http://reboot.pro/5917/


Wonko

[tiri]

In deed, it is beautiful.
What has to be added to run msiexec in order to be able to install programs in this tiny PE?

Thanks for your help!
Thomas.

[Wonko the Sane]

What has to be added to run msiexec in order to be able to install programs in this tiny PE?

The general idea of a PE is that you DO NOT install programs to it (because in PE's the Registry is "volatile"), unless you want to re-install at every re-boot or you find a way to "freeze" or "consolidate" changes (which may need VSS services, that right now are not working in PE 3.x).

You normally either use "Portable Apps" or you pre-install the app at build time (using Winbuilder .script or similar).

Anyway, see here :
http://reboot.pro/12041/


Wonko

[pscEx]

Let me join the party!

Peter

[sbaeder]

It seems to me that 190meg ISO is too big for what I want.

Really - why does the size of the ISO matter...Seems that your arguements are more about the command line vs. a GUI...

Honestly, I don't want desktop Windows at all. All I want is the Windows 2000 recovery console to work with new NTFS versions and BCDEdit. If I could start from CMD.com and add a few GNUWin32 tools that would be a great start... anything that can be operated by mouse is a big no-no for me. (I can't script mouse clicks easily) Anything that can be launched from cmd.exe or bash is a big + on a recovery disc, and if I can boot from a floppy, I'm all the happier.

Most of the systems I work don't have optical drives. (no CD or DVD) so my recovery boot options are USB, PXE or Floppy.

Do a lot of your systems have floppies? if so, a PLoP boot floppy that then can boot off a USB thumbdrive seem like a good compromise...and gives you more than enough space...

Usual tasks are, clear dead profiles, defrag including MFT (I can do that from the command line) delete swap file and hiberfile, edit BCD / MBR, run chkdsk while the normal boot volume is not mounted.

Additional pros are Regln (command line access to off-line registry hives) winlog (to access system event logs from command line) strarc (like tar, but supporting ACLs, ADSs, junctions and reparse points etc) and ability to connect to NFS/ftp/SMB(cfis) shares and recover damaged or deleted files.

That last part is harder to do from command line only, but that's only because the people who make the tools don't seem to know what a useful UI is. (ie, one with switches beginning / or - and no buttons, scrollers, drop-downs, pop-ups, toobars etc. and preferably one whose output can be parsed by grep or sed and passed as input to something else.) XD

GNU nano, is already to complex and limited a UI for most of what I want to do. Hew has enough features to make it worth the guff.

Basically, if I'm in the position where I'm recovering an ailing OS, I want to boot from some remote media and have something like BSDs "Single User Mode". Mac and some Linux distros provide this, and 2K recovery console was a gift from the gods... but it's outdated, and less useful than a DOS 7 / freeDOS boot floppy on modern Windows. (at least I can load NTFS for DOS and HX DOS to run most GNUWin32 tools and access an NTFS drive with that)

Anyone think we can "bum down" a Win7 PE to get rid of everything Common Controls, GDIPlus, WPF, Heck, I'd even kill GDI it's self if I could get away with it. Text mode frame buffer is more than adequate. As is the NT "native mode" that chkdsk & several AV / Defrag tools use to run before the swap file and registry hives are "locked"... but I would need kernel32.dll and user32.dll. :s lol (so... the moment where Win32 starts up, just before the desktop UI is initiated. Which, on normal Windows boot, is exactly the same point. >.<)

Have you looked at the plain old vanilla MS recovery ISO??? From this posting on NeoSmart, other then the fact it also has the backup and some other "tools", it should fit the bill...

What it does: The Windows 7 Recovery Disc can be used to access a system recovery menu, giving you options of using System Restore, Complete PC Backup, automated system repair, and a command-line prompt for manual advanced recovery.

Yes, it is bigger than even this, but would still fit onto a 256MB flash (if you can find one that small)...

[Arvy]

All of this leads to a question which, although it would seem to be an obvious one here in this development forum, is probably going to bring me a lot of flak for asking. But, what the heck, I'll ask anyway. At my age, I've long ago developed a hide that is pretty much flameproof.

Why is it that so many WinBuilder projects include so many non-essentials that are pre-selected for inclusion in their PE builds?

The Win7PE_SE project (from which this "skeleton" was extracted) is certainly not alone in that repect, but I'd almost given up on it until al_jo showed us exactly how minimalist it could be made. I can understand that human nature and the desire to "show off" any project's full potential are probably significant factors. But, from the standpoint of not overwheming the end user, wouldn't it make more sense to pre-select ONLY the barebones essentials and let the user add all other options according to his or her actual needs?

Especially for poor old geeks like me who are never quite sure what can safely be eliminated (and who are a bit lazy besides) it seems like a reasonable question. But for those who are strongly inclined to the opposite opinion, please aim carefully at the target and don't hit any innocent bystanders.