2 replies to this topic

[steve6375]

Someone complained that my Tutorial #43 for installing Windows from a USB pen using FiraDisk did not work for Server 2012 RC.
I tested this and found that the WinPE environment for the install ISO does indeed not seem to work with FiraDisk.
The FiraDisk driver seems to load, however it does not load the ISO using the StartOptions set by grub4dos.
I then added the StartOptions into the registry and re-installed FiraDisk and that also did not load the ISO. So it seems that for some reason FiraDisk is not working in the WinPE Setup environment of Server 2012??? Could someone verify this?


I tried ImDisk and that did load the ISO (however the Setup program still would not see the virtual drive and reported a 'no DVD found' message - but that is another issue entirely - must be a bug in Server 2012 RC as even if I put the install.wim onto the sources folder on the USB drive, setup still does not find it!). I used 8400.0.WINMAIN_WIN8RC.120518-1423_X64FRE_SERVER_EN-US-HRC_SSS_X64FRE_EN-US_DV5.ISO for this test.

[steve6375]

I have modified Tutorial #43 to load the ISO with FiraDisk, but if that does not work it uses ImDisk instead.
Now we can map an ISO under Server 2012 WinPE
It is a shame that FiraDisk does not work under 64-bit Server 2012 WinPE (and possibly 64bit Win8 WinPE too)

[cyphersmith]

I have modified Tutorial #43 to load the ISO with FiraDisk, but if that does not work it uses ImDisk instead.
Now we can map an ISO under Server 2012 WinPE
It is a shame that FiraDisk does not work under 64-bit Server 2012 WinPE (and possibly 64bit Win8 WinPE too)

I think that I know why this is not working.

Windows 8 (and Server 2012) use a new signing method. Signed drivers that worked for Windows 7 won't work for Windows 8. We ran into this problem at my workplace when doing some testing of Windows 8. Obviously, you can turn off driver signing (though the method for doing that is arcane in Windows 8, and may need to be done on every boot), but you can't do that during installation. If you have the capability, you could recompile FiraDisk with a Windows 8 test driver signature. But you appear to have figured out a workaround, so it's not necessary.