command-line xp or pe to ram

Hello! Everyone..

Woohoo! That's my first new Topic,
Been reading this forum for a few years now,
as well as cdforum and betaarchive.
On and off.
I've tried a lot of Trial and error, but now I decided to post. I'll just give a big rant.
Ok, my question(s) is (are):

Me wants to boot something in ram.
Me wants it to be nt-based (xp based)
Me wants it to be mini, like the win3.1 Minibox.
Me would like to base on full xp command-line, (Dennis123 &Dietmar)
Me would like it to 'be a bit pe' (though I don't know mUcho about pe)
Me would like it to boot to ram. Not from usb, as wear& tear.
To ram. Either from a folder & winnt.sif on hd, loaded by setupldr2003, or from an image file (grub4dos loaded) (or boot.ini)
Image file: like winram project (with iso inside an .img)
or an SDi, but I fail to build one that works.
a Wim? I have no knowledge of wims.
So, that was about my 'wants'.

Another question, What are the differences between xp files and pe files, as pe seems to be much more modulable in its booting.
For example, Pe boots with (the equivalent of a renamed) setupldr. Don't it?
Concerning Hives. read about euhenio's mobileos. Plus the loadhive tool. This is supposed to mean, edit the registry, so the boot will know to look for hives on ramdisk, rather than go direct to hives of my hd's installed version of xp.


Ok, summing-up.
I want a small xp (commandline),for pleasure & understanding, booting to ram. What are the differences between a commandline pe
and a commandline xp? And their boot-process.

Pfew. If anyone can enlighten me on anything, that'll be appreciated.
Ronan.

It seems to me that (notwithstanding a few gaps in your understanding of the PE booting vs. the "full XP booting ) you summed up well the thing.

Quick steps (mind you, you will need to do a lot of homework on your own ):
Version 1 ("real XP" based)

• build a XPCLI:
  http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=3717
• test it in (say) Qemu
• install to the XPCLI the Firadisk driver:
  http://www.boot-land...hp?showforum=94
  http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=9328
  http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=8804
• map in Qemu the actual \\PhysicalDriven containing the XPCLI image
• boot to grub4dos (as an example with a grub4dos floppy) and map the XPCLI .img in memory, and boot it

In the above you CANNOT use a .iso inside .img, but at the most a .img inside .img.

You may want to also attempt GREATLY slimming down this project:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=3890
which does run a "full XP" from a .iso.


Version 2 ("PE 1.x based")

• search the board for one of the old very minimal projects (there were one or two by psc and also one by Draugen), some links are given in this thread:
  http://www.boot-land...showtopic=12257
• test it in (say) Qemu
• integrate to it the Firadisk driver, or use the F6 option with a virtual floppy image
  (or use MS own Server 2003 SP1 RAMDISK booting method)
• map in Qemu the actual \\PhysicalDriven containing the PE image
• boot to grub4dos (as an example with a grub4dos floppy) and map the PE .img in memory, and boot it

With this you can use a .iso inside .img allright.

Both the above should also work with the WinVblock driver:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=8168


Since BOTH the above are relatively difficult, the first much more than the second, BEFORE attempting building them, you should make sure you can boot through the various methods for Recovery Console (which are fully documented):
http://www.boot-land...showtopic=11393
http://www.boot-land...showtopic=10073
http://www.boot-land...showtopic=11084
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=5316

In order to get familiar with the tools an methods used.

Essentially the Recovery Console is a very minimal PE build (i.e. it uses the same booting mechanism, but it is much smaller and faster for tests).


Wonko

Sorry Never got round to posting a real 'Thank you',(had only clicked 'helpful-reply button') so here's it.
Happy new year.
For those reading, esp. the beginners, yeah follow what was said. You'll still have to research a Lot. Now I see what a basic pe is, as well as a mini cli xp.