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[ispy]

Hi all,

I was wondering if this question was even possible in light of the limitations of WinPE particularly in connection with larger programs. I have seen it 'hinted' here on Rebootpro & elsewhere on the www the possibility of running WinPE as a host-OS-PE from a Hdd or external USB or Hdd kinda persistent like.

A natural choice of WinPE variant I suppose could be Win10PE in combination with say "Portable" Virtual-Box in an attempt to simplify the building process but there would need to be the Vbox guest additions usb3 etc (Is there a script?). Call it a poor-mans hypervisor

However upon further reflection some may say you could use Qemu (KVM) with some sort of Gui front-end at a pinch QtEmu see here:
https://www.how2shou...windows-10.html(Works with Win10 But not sure about Win10PE).

The VBox idea seems less messy or easier to me - could be wrong.

Anyway the point being can you bundle a VM of some description into Win10PE & in turn install it onto a HDD or Ext USB Drive & if you can, how do you do it and with what do you do it with please? Has anyone even done this successfully & if so givus a Howto instruction or tutorial please?

And before anyone says why not use (T1's) Hyper-V, VMware, XEN Promox etc most of these have the features that you want crippled and as to the size of them, no thanks. Win10PE fitted with a zipping tool internet access & VM as described above would be under a Gig & most of these T1's Hypervisors are either Windows, Linux or some other OS under the bonnet so to me they are not T1's more like T1.5's, anyway rant concluded, just filling in the blanks as to the reasons why not in my case.

Then you could load many different types of OS be more secure & keep using old Legacy stuff that I like. anyway any takers to help this ole-fossil out. Thanks in advance for any info divulged

Best Regards,

Eye "V"

[noel]

Hi,

 

 

the point being can you bundle a VM of some description into Win10PE & in turn install it onto a HDD

I am not sure I understand what you want to do.
Maybe the machine translator I use is too limited.

To make it simple and very schematically, a VM at a standstill is a VHD file and a hardware configuration file
What do you mean by installing a VM? Is copying files of a VM to hard drive?
You are talking about a VM: so somewhere there is a hypervisor (whatever it is) that will start this VM (otherwise, what is it for?).
Where is this hypervisor? in Winpe? or in the hard drive that received the files from the VM? what is its host OS? Winpe? or another OS?

 

For my part, I have already built a winpe10 integrating HyperV (I am talking about the hypervisor and not the Integated Components).
I do not go into the details of the construction. The set is contained in a VHD of 10GB.

I also put and integrate an VirtualBox (as i describ in this site): not too complex but old in my memory.

 

Maybe someone else can understand your need.

[ispy]

Hi Noel

Many thanks for replying to my post and yes you are right I tend to ramble on a lot not getting to the point or not explaining myself, I suppose I am just trying to explain the reason for what I am trying to do, I will try to explain perhaps in stages.

 

Stage 1 - Create or make a Win10PE recovery disk (that I wish to use in a Non-recovery Manner) with say "Portable" Virtualbox built within it (A zipping tool and internet access capability) from a script or plugin if that is what it is called hence the word "bundled" being used. So Win10pe is the driver for Portable Virtual-Box

 

Stage 2 - Be capable of installing the win10PE to either a Hard Drive or External USB2 Hard-drive in a persistent manner alterations are saved upon exit.

 

So its like the Win10PE is doing the same job as say Hyper-V's underlying tweaked cut-down Microsoft OS & Portable Virtual-Box provides the virtual machine part of the setup. But it will be a lot smaller than Hyper-V but the combination of Win10PE + VirtualBox grouped together will be like Hyper-V in the way it works though but will have a Gui-frontend provided by Portable VBox. I personally do Not like Hyper-V personally because the free version is command-line only I think they call it "Server" & its just too big, crippled and large. 

 

IF Win10PE is capable of running "Portable" Virtual-box in the manner I am proposing it will be a Microsoft Gui alternative to Hyper-V using freeware components.

 

The Win10PE would be independent of Windows10, I hope this explains what I am trying to do, it all works inside my head but there maybe practical reasons as to why it will not work Why Win10PE? Well Win10PE has a relatively small in footprint & is a relatively new M$ OS.

 

Stay Safe & Best Wishes,

 

Eye     

[RoyM]

It sounds like you want a flat-boot Win10PE.

But don't integrate VM, Use it portable, 

Just add Portable VM to the .VHD or Win10PE HDD.

 

I have had success with VBox in PE, less success with Qemu.

But they are excruciatingly slow.

 

See Here:

http://reboot.pro/in...topic=21891&hl=

 

Regards

RoyM

[ispy]

Hi RoyM

 

1stly many thanks for your reply post AHhh so you have done this & it seems you have also used "portable VBox"

 

 

It sounds like you want a flat-boot Win10PE.

Apologies Not entirely sure what flat-boot means in technical terms but if you mean booting Win10PE off a hard drive or USB External HDD then yes that is/was the intention

 

But don't integrate VM, Use it portable

The reason for using or selecting Virtual-Box portable is in my mind it would be easier to write a script to be incorporated into Win10PE if indeed someone may have pre-written script to accomplish this, all the better. However are you saying keep the Win10PE & Portable-VBox separate, & if you are how do you get Port-VBox loaded f4rom Win10PE? Have you had this running with guest additions etc also, the full hit so to speak?

 

I have had success with VBox in PE, less success with Qemu.

But they are excruciatingly slow.

 

The Qemu option to me seems difficult to do you would need Qemu (KVM) & a front-end Gui which seems like a bridge to far. Now the next bit of your post is the bit that is most interesting "excruciatingly slow". Wow I would have thought it would be fairly quick using a PE off a Hard Drive by virtue of the PE's foot-print.

 

Is there any way of loading the key part of the Win10PE into Ram and allocating more ram to VBox I suppose you would need at least 8Gb Ram as a base starting point? The only other alternative I can think of would be to use a Linux - Distro like Slitaz or Puppy Linux pre-bundled with VBox but it couldn't be the portable version of VBox though as I don't think Linux uses portable programs but I could be wrong or at least it's news to me.

 

Anyway many thanks for the web link I will read more in depth offline and "Many Thanks" for sharing your experiences

 

Grateful Thanks

 

Eye

[HikaruSniper]

Hi, have you tried this?

sup eru ser . com /questions/1660413/how-to-install-a-winpe-based-os-to-an-internal-hard-drive-persistent

[ispy]

Hi HikaruSniper

 

Many thanks for the Web-Link certainly lots to read and inwardly digest, latched onto this comment from a sub-link on the site which is of concern however 72 hours is a long time in continuous use I suppose.

 

To prevent its use as a production operating system, Windows PE automatically stops running the shell and restarts after 72 hours of continuous use. This period is not configurable.

I wouldn't be using it over a 4 day period anyway 24 hours would be pushing it somewhat.

 

Anyway plenty to read. Also I have read that, I think it was on the oven site:

 

Preferred ISO: Windows 10 20H1 (Build 19041.264 - 2020.05)

 Is there any particular reason for this particular distrib being the preferred for making a Win10PE or is this old news? I have managed to get a copy but it seems to be and ESD file extension so will need to get a hold of some util under the umbrella of ESD2ISO format from somewhere. Behind the times, I am a bit, I'm afraid.

 

Best Regards,

 

Eye   

[noel]

Hi Ispy
Because I do not understand English language and the automatic translator disturbs my understanding of your need, I allow myself to express it with my vocabulary.

I describe the boot environment and the actions you will do when everything works well to use your "end object"
 

Your future boot environment is a physical machine with an external hard drive connected to boot.
For simplicity it is assumed that the physical machine does not have an internal hard drive. I say this to avoid ambiguities in translation.

1 - you boot to Winpe contained in the external hard drive.
2 - you launch the program "Portable VirualBox"
3 - you build or import a virtual machine (VM).
4 - the VHD file (or equivalent according to hypervisor) is contained in the external hard drive
5 - this VM works and allowed to launch an OS = linux (so that things are clear with the translations).
6 - you stop the Linux OS of the VM
7 - the VM shuts down and its files (VHD + configuration) are saved in the external hard drive
8 - you stop Winpe
9 - the next time you boot Winpe, you restart VirtualBox (I don't know this portable program and I assume it will restart properly)
10 - you find and start the VM containing linux
 

Is this the right scenario?

[ispy]

@noel ,

 

Yes essentially you have got it, but in "my" stupidity, I assumed that because Win10PE was smaller than Win10 full install it would be quicker, if it was run from a HDD/USB instead of from a CD/DVD which I can understand would be a lot slower

 

However if you read post #4 by RoyM you will see he has successfully done this but his quote says it all

But they are excruciatingly slow

 

So I can only speculate the only way of speeding things up would be to run Win10PE within volatile memory (RAM) which would mean loading the whole of the Win10PE into ram & you would need additional ram for the VirtualBox itself, my guess is a minimum of 8Gb of Ram as a starting point. Which you could argue, going by today's standards is not too much but could be difficult for others wanting to do the same.

 

However just to to update things I have been looking at Linux distros like Puppy-linux, Slitaz, porteus & Slax etc that have a small front-end footprint and run in RAM & you can then load Vbox, Qemu Vmware player etc but again enough Ram would be needed to drive the whole selected thing.

 

noel - I don't really want to discuss this at further length as this is a Win10PE forum & I'm going off at a tangent so I need to stay within the boundary of Win10PE it was just an idea & I'm grateful to RoyM for his experience and explanation of how he did this but as he explains you can do this but it is painfully SLOooow  

 

Best Regards

 

Eye