I'm trying to boot a diskless PC with a Windows Embedded 7 (WES7) build using PXE booting.
I'm aware that this isn't supported by Microsoft but I'm also aware that it is possible.
I've built a WES7 PC with very minimal features and created a .wim file from it using imagex. The size of the .wim file is about 300MB (created with maximum compression) which doesn't seem to be too big.
I've now removed all the disk drives and am trying to PXE boot the same PC to a RAM disk.
I have editted the wim file to include the registry entries and additional drivers suggested by this topic on an msdn forum -
"bit.ly/UF6p49" by Joakim Schicht. I've set the size of the Ram disk to 1024M (I've also tried it with it set to 2048M)
I have produced a BCD file from two batch files - the second one created once the GUID has been obtained - and looked at it using VisualBCD and it seems to include all the bits that I think it should. See the end of this post for the batch files.
When I use TFTP32 to serve the files to the PC, they are transferred OK and the Windows 7 boot process begins (the green ticker runs). After about 15 seconds, I lose the startup screen and get a BSOD with the message:
STOP: 0x0000007B (0x84B86b58, 0xC000000D, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) which is "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE".
I've tried booting a completely different PC with the same image and I get the same error (except the first data in the brackets is 0x88386A58 on the other PC) The first PC has 2G RAM, the second has 4G RAM.
I'm not sure if it helps at all, but I've included a directory listing of the folder that my TFTP32 looks at.
I'm sure I'm only a smidgen away from getting this running but what have I missed? I can't believe that there's not a complete step by step guide somewhere but I can't find one after many hours of searching.
Batch file 1
Bcdedit -createstore d:\bcdcreate\BCD
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -create {ramdiskoptions}
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice boot
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -create {bootmgr} /d "BootManager"
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {bootmgr} timeout 10
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -create /d "MyWinPE Boot Image" /application osloader
Batch File 2
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {GUID} systemroot \Windows
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {GUID} detecthal Yes
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {GUID} winpe Yes
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {GUID} osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\Boot\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -set {GUID} device ramdisk=[boot]\Boot\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
Bcdedit -store d:\bcdcreate\BCD -displayorder {GUID}
Directory of d:\TFTPRoot
09/01/2013 09:44 <DIR> .
09/01/2013 09:44 <DIR> ..
10/06/2009 22:44 79 abortpxe.com
09/01/2013 11:08 <DIR> boot
14/07/2009 02:26 523,328 bootmgr.exe
09/01/2013 08:37 <DIR> en-US
10/06/2009 22:15 25,772 pxeboot.com
10/06/2009 22:15 25,772 pxeboot.n12
09/01/2013 09:36 <DIR> sources
10/06/2009 22:44 1,347 WdsConfig.inf
10/06/2009 22:44 31,124 wdsnbp.com
6 File(s) 607,422 bytes
Directory of d:\TFTPRoot\boot
09/01/2013 11:08 <DIR> .
09/01/2013 11:08 <DIR> ..
08/01/2012 16:15 12,288 BCD
10/06/2009 14:44 3,170,304 boot.sdi
09/01/2013 11:06 314,446,008 boot.wim
10/06/2009 14:14 1,024 bootfix.bin
10/06/2009 14:14 4,096 etfsboot.com
09/01/2013 08:41 <DIR> fonts
5 File(s) 1,662,875,488 bytes
Directory of d:\TFTPRoot\boot\fonts
09/01/2013 08:41 <DIR> .
09/01/2013 08:41 <DIR> ..
14/07/2009 10:05 3,693,112 chs_boot.ttf
14/07/2009 10:05 3,875,804 cht_boot.ttf
14/07/2009 10:05 1,983,244 jpn_boot.ttf
14/07/2009 10:05 2,370,376 kor_boot.ttf
14/07/2009 10:05 46,468 wgl4_boot.ttf
5 File(s) 11,969,004 bytes
Directory of d:\TFTPRoot\en-US
09/01/2013 08:37 <DIR> .
09/01/2013 08:37 <DIR> ..
14/07/2009 02:17 85,056 bootmgr.exe.mui
1 File(s) 85,056 bytes
Directory of d:\TFTPRoot\sources
09/01/2013 09:36 <DIR> .
09/01/2013 09:36 <DIR> ..
0 File(s) 0 bytes