Jump to content











Photo

Make your old Win7 or Win8.x based WinPEs capables to access a multipartitioned USB stick, SD or MicroSD.

win7 win8 win8.1 usb multipartitions

  • Please log in to reply
1 reply to this topic

#1 alacran

alacran

    Platinum Member

  • .script developer
  • 2710 posts
  •  
    Mexico

Posted 11 March 2020 - 11:12 PM

Make your old Win7 or Win8.x based WinPEs capables to access a multipartitioned USB stick, SD or MicroSD installing diskmod filter driver on the WinPEs.

When using a fixed type device or a USB HDD/SSD you do not have problems to read/write on all partitions from any WinPE, but if using a Win7 or Win8.x based WinPE, you only have access to firts partition of a multipartitioned USB stick, SD or MicroSD. Only A WinPE based on a Win10 v1703 or newer, is capable to access all partitions on this devices.

We have 5 PCs at home with a mix of Win7, and Win8 and Win8.1 (with Classic Shell), some of them (if capable) also have Win10 in dual boot (installed during the free offert, to get the ID), but nobody here likes Win10 and they continuous and problematic updates and Telemetry. As our lan is WiFi, I selected metered connection to stop the insidious updates, but finaly we all stop using 10.

 

So we are planning to keep using the old OS versions and old equipment as long as possible. And when not possible anymore maybe use Linux Mint, I have been testing it in triple boot and it looks fine for general pourpose. But keep 7 in dual boot for some games and programs that do not run on Linux.

I'm using now some multipartitioned fast MicroSD(s) + a USB 3.0 adapter but I also have several old WinPEs made some time ago from 7, 8 and 8.1 x64 and x86, that have been very usefull during many years, and I want to keep, and have them ready for use, just in case.

Install diskmod from karyonix on the running OS is very easy, but it is not the same thing on a WinPE.

Tried to install diskmod from karyonix mounting the boot.wim with Dism and install it as any other driver, but this don't work.

After running some experiments, I found the right way to install it on a PE:

Get diskmod from karyonix on his old post: http://reboot.pro/to...isk/?hl=diskmod

or from this optional link on downloads >>> tools section: http://reboot.pro/fi...le/617-diskmod/

Extract the boot.wim from the ISO (located into the folder sources), you can use 7-zip for this, and mount it with Dism or DismMountService from Retokener (in case the WIM file has two indexes select index 2), better option as you can handle all versions from same tool with the appropiated version of Dism (10.0.17763.1, info for download on the program) without having to download the full pakage.

 

Dism Mount Service download: http://reboot.pro/fi...-mount-service/

If your PE is x86 copy diskmod.sys to Windows\System32\drivers folder. DO NOT dismount it yet.

If your PE is x64 copy to another folder/location diskmo64.sys and rename it to diskmod.sys and then copy the renamed file to Windows\System32\drivers folder,  DO NOT dismount it yet.

Mount the respective registry Hive with regedit,exe or use offlinereg from erwan.l (my prefered option) to inject the two attached registry files, do it one by one, if not, even if it is reported as correctly installed, it do not work when you boot the WinPE.

 

offlinereg page, download is on first post: http://reboot.pro/to...527-offlinereg/

 

How to use offlinereg for this task:

Downloat and extract it in a folder on the root of any drive.
 
Let's assume the boot.wim is mounted to C:\temp and your current running OS is x64.

Located into offlinereg folder open an elevated Command Promt and copy following line and paste it on the elevated command promt and press ENTER.

offlinereg-win64 "C:\temp\Windows\System32\config\system" " " import diskmod-1.reg

Once it finished, copy/paste now following line and press ENTER.

offlinereg-win64 "C:\temp\Windows\System32\config\system" " " import diskmod-2.reg

Now close all open windows, Dism is very prone to failures if there is any window open, and dismount the boot.wim file commiting/saving changes.

You may use this boot.wim into a folder (or directly renamed as WinPE-ABC-x64.wim as an example) to boot using Windows bootmanager or  you can rebuild your ISO using a program as UltraIso or similar, delet first the old boot.wim and add the new one and rebuild the ISO.

 

Now when you boot from the WinPE the USB stick, SD or MicroSD will be treated as a fixed disk.
 

EDIT:

  • Attached a picture of and old 7pe_x86_E.iso with dismod Filter Driver added using this procedure, where U-BOOT and U-NTFS are the two partitions of the USB stick.
  • To include diskmod in new builds made from 7 or 8.x sources, Please see Diskmod.script: http://reboot.pro/to...-diskmodscript/

 

alacran

Attached Files



#2 alacran

alacran

    Platinum Member

  • .script developer
  • 2710 posts
  •  
    Mexico

Posted 11 March 2020 - 11:51 PM

Of course there is also a workaround if you don't want to do it in a permanent way.

 

You can use same procedure used for permanent install on a running OS, but it will not be permanent, as your WinPE is loaded in Ram.

 

Keep handy the diskmod folder into first partition of your USB device, boot your WinPE from your USB stick, make a right click on diskmod.inf, select install, ignore the reboot message, run UFDasHDD.bat, select your USB device for secure unplug, after a couple of seconds replug it again, and now you can have access to all partitions on it, but you have to do it every time you boot a 7 to 8.x WinPE from a multipartitioned device, and this is frustrating, and can't be done if you booted from a Wimboot VHD (it is better to have dismod permanently installed into the VHD before making the Wimboot mode capture as I do), same applies for following.

 

Also BootIce can be used to change partitions order, but you need to have a copy of it in every partition, so you can change partition order again, and remember to switch back your partitions to original order before turn of the WinPE, doing this way is a mess if you have more than 2 partitions, I used this procedure for long time, and can confirm you will need always something located on another partition.

 

alacran


  • ginzu likes this





Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: win7, win8, win8.1, usb, multipartitions

0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users