I was looking at updating my WinBuilder Project "pe21" based on Windows PE 2.1, when along comes Windows PE 3.0.
For anyone interested, you can download the documentation for WinPE 3.0 from here:
http://www.microsoft...;displaylang=en
The page has links to the latest "Windows AIK for Windows 7 Beta" in German, English and Japanese.
Stand by for a new Project - "pe3"! ...
...Regards
Warning! Installing the new WAIK 2.0 for Windows 7 Beta may play havoc with your Vista-based Winbuilder Projects.
Step 1: Obtain and Install 'Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows 7 Beta)'.
Find the link from Microsoft Downloads for the WAIK and start downloading the ISO file. Save it to a Hard Disk Drive.
The WAIK is available in three languages - German, English and Japanese - and there is a drop-down box on the download page to change the language. Depending on the language, the file is called KB3AIK_DE.iso (1395.5 MB), KB3AIK_EN.iso (1376.1 MB), or KB3AIK_JP.iso (1457.4 MB). I will only use the English Version.
While the download is progressing... (it took me 8 hours!)... It is recommended by MS to uninstall any previous versions of WAIK, so go to Control Panles>Add/Remove Programs, and look for 'Windows Automated Installation Kit'. Click on 'Click here for support information' to show the version. It should be v. 1.1.0 or earlier. Close and click 'Remove' and follow the instructions. A reboot is required.
For future reference, I kept a copy of the older WAIK program folder by going to the 'Program Files' folder and firstly created a copy of the 'Windows AIK' folder (don't delete or rename it directly, or the uninstall might get a bit confused), which I then renamed 'Windows AIK 1.1'.
When the ISO file has been downloaded, it needs to be burnt (not copied) to a DVD. Most PCs come with programs to burn images to optical disks - Roxio, Nero, etc. My favourite is the 100% free ImgBurn by Lightning UK! available from http://www.imgburn.com/, where you would use its 'write' mode to burn the ISO file to a DVD (CDs are too small). Then eject and re-insert the new DVD to start it.
Unfortunately, my Optical Drive works only some of the time, and didn't work when I needed it! Hmmmm... MS has an unsupported program called 'Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel v2.0.1.1' available from here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/916902 Download, Unzip and follow the readme.txt to mount the ISO file. Go to 'My Computer' and double click on the new virtual CD-ROM Drive to start the WAIK DVD.
Whatever method, when the DVD starts, a window should appear like this:
Click 'Windows AIK Setup' to start the installation. Awarning may appear if you do not have the correct .NET Framework or MSXML installed, in which case, close the WAIK installation, and select .NET Framework Setup and/or MSXML 6.0 Setup from the WAIK DVD window.
When everything is installed, the first thing to notice is the new Start Menu item under 'All Programs' called 'Microsoft Windows AIK' with shortcuts to Documentation, 'Windows System Image Manager' and 'Deployment Tools Command Prompt'. The new command prompt sets the environment path to include the various tools in the WAIK Program folder. At the new command prompt, type 'DISM' (without quotes) and the following should appear.
The good news is that the new tool 'DISM' seems to run under XP. I haven't tried it in action, so fingers crossed.
2. Manually Create a basic Windows PE 3.0 Boot CD and test it in a Virtual Machine and in a real environment.
The nicest thing I can say obout my Optical Drive is that it is unreliable ...
...I bought a can of compressed air and huffed and puffed and shook and tapped, and managed to get one last boot out of it. I took the chance to setup for dual booting XP and WinPE (into RAM) from the same partition. More on that a bit later.
So. There is a change of plans... no testing of the boot CDs in a real environment ... ATM anyway.
On closer inspection of the new multi-tool, DISM.exe under XP (maybe other OSes too), there is an 'access denied' error when unmounting with 'dism.exe /unmount-wim'. To the naked eye, there doesn't seem to be problem, but I'm taking no chances especially given the fact that mounting and unmounting images takes a painfully long time with the new tools. Here's a snippet from the new 'Users Guide' - maybe it gives a clue...
When using imagex /apply with a base image, you cannot delete the working directory directly after adding a package. Dism.exe applies ACLs on certain Windows PE source files. This limitation does not exist if you use the imagex command with the /mount option. To work around this limitation, you must manually take ownership of the files...
What's an ACL?
Before uninstalling it, I went to the new command prompt and ran the batch 'copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe3_x86', which creates a directory structure and copies various files from the WAIK Program Folder This sets up an environment in the specified folder for mounting, customizing and saving WIMs, and for creating bootable ISO files to burn to disk. On a single machine, it is possible to create separate WinPEs for either the x86 or x64 architectures, so it is necessary to specify the architecture in the copype command.
I made and renamed a copy of the 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\' folder and uninstalled WAIK 2.0 with 'Add/Remove Programs'. Back to the good old tools of WAIK 1.1 for the time being.
The first series of Windows PE 1.x was around long before a Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) was heard of. When WAIK 1.x came along it presented us with WinPE 2.x, and now the new WAIK 2.x has provided us with WinPE 3.x... It's confusingly out of synch... I'll use the term 'new' when referring to WAIK 2.0 and WinPE 3.0, and 'old' when referring to WAIK 1.1 and WinPE 2.1.
OK. The old WAIK is reinstalled with its files in the default 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\' folder. I also have a copy of the new WAIK files in 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK 2.0\' and some in 'C:\winpe3_x86\'.
I was keen to see what's new in WinPE 3.0, so renamed the old base WIM file at 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\winpe.wim' to 'old_winpe.wim', and copied over the new winpe.wim from 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK 2.0\Tools\PETools\x86\'. Fired up Winbuilder 074 with my 'pe21' Project and away I went. 'pe21' booted up like old times except that no shortcuts were created at boot-time... plenty of .vbs errors!
The new base winpe.wim file is considerably smaller than the old file. Has MS been on a mission to reduce bloat? Unfortunately not! There is a collection of 'packages' that can be added to offline .wim images - language packs, system packs and now setup packs, etc. In the old days, the base winpe.wim contained most of the system packs in a 'staged' state. peimg.exe could be used to fully install them or to get rid of them by using the /prep switch. The new winpe.wim contains only a language pack and the 'xml' pack (if my memory serves me correct), which, I suppose, accounts for most of the difference in size.
The shortcuts in 'pe21' most likely failed because there was no 'scripting' package staged in new winpe.wim. So peimg.exe was unable to install it and the .vbs scripts couldn't run at boot-time to create the shortcuts. That was the first brief look.
I love those new Aero Snaps, or whatever they're called, where windows resize and dock to the sides of the screen when the cursor drags them to the edge. Cool. And they're in WinPE 3.0!
Back to the nitty-gritty of manually creating a very basic Windows PE 3.0, albeit, using the old tools.
(1) Mount the new winpe.wim using the old imagex. One .wim can hold multiple images, so it is always necessry to specify the index number of the image.
(2) Add certain RAID drivers to the mounted image using peimg.
(3) 'prep' the image using peimg to remove extraneous packages.
(4) Capture the mounted image as a boot image to a new boot.wim file using imagex. If there is an existing boot.wim in the path of the new, the new image will be added to the existing boot.wim. It's important to delete or rename the old boot.wim files.
(5) Unmount the mounted image without saving (committing) changes to the original winpe.wim.
(6) Create a bootable ISO file using the oscdimg.exe.
Done! The ISO can be burnt (not copied) to a CD which can be booted.
Here's a screenshot of the old WAIK Command Prompt Window showing the steps.
Most of the commands can be copied and pasted from the old 'Users Guide' or from elswhere on the Web. Here's a text file of the same output.
Note that I have two 'build environments' created using the 'copype.cmd' - one from the currently-installed old WAIK, and one from the uninstalled new WAIK. For my build environment, I am using the latter with the new winpe.wim, which is under the 'C:\winpe3_x86' directory. The old is in the default-named 'C:\winpe_x86' directory. Don't forget to navigate to the 'C:\winpe?_x86\ISO\sources\' folder and delete or rename any existing boot.wim before capturing the new boot.wim.
What now? Dual Boot XP and WinPE 3.0 from the Same Partition. Set it up with the new Boot CD. I have cheated a bit. As they say, 'Here's one I prepared earlier.' All I had was a single partition booting XP and a dodgy CD-ROM Drive. When an old CD managed to boot I set up the computer for Dual Booting. Then I threw caution to the wind, booted the new basic WinPE 3.0 from the Hard Drive into RAM, destroyed the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) file and reset the bootsector to NT52 - all in the name of 'demonstration' and for the sake of getting the following screenshot which shows the process of setting up the Dual Boot from within WinPE 3.0 (includes a few 'oops'es as well.)
WinPE 3.0 comes with the two necessary tools, bootsect.exe and bcdedit.exe. bootsect.exe needs to lock the C: Drive. Therefore, it is important that nothing on C: be opened or running in WinPE which itself is booted totally into RAM.
Most of the info came originally from frequently asked questions here:
http://technet.micro...y/cc721886.aspx
How to create an entry to boot a WIM image from a hard disk
To create an entry to boot a Windows Imaging Format (WIM) image, you will need to create an OSloader type entry with RAMDISK options pointing to the boot partition. To do this, use the following procedure. In this procedure, the arcpath multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) refers to the C: drive on the computer, and Boot.wim is a regular Boot.wim with Winload.exe in the System32 folder inside the WIM image.
To create an entry to boot a WIM image from hard disk
Create the {ramdisktoptions} object in your BCD store by specifying the following. Drive should be the drive that contains the image.
bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk options"
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition=Drive
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
Create a new boot application entry by specifying:
bcdedit /create /d "Boot from WIM" /application OSLOADER
This will return an identifier (GUID) for the newly created entry. This new entry will be referred to as {GUID} in the rest of this procedure. Next specify the following:
bcdedit /set {GUID} device ramdisk=[c:]\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set {GUID} path \windows\system32\winload.exe
bcdedit /set {GUID} osdevice ramdisk=[c:]\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set {GUID} systemroot \windows
If you are booting into Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), then you will also need to specify:
bcdedit /set {GUID} winpe yes
bcdedit /set {GUID} detecthal yes
Next specify the following to add your new entry to the display order:
bcdedit /displayorder {GUID} /addlast
However, I think that this assumes a pre-existing BCD file from an installation of Vista or later OS. Nevertheless, it is valid.
The other source of info is here:
http://technet.micro...sktopfiles.aspx
It is more to the point but seems to miss one crucial point - putting Windows PE into the display order of the Boot Manager. Without that, the Boot Manager fails to appear and goes straight to the single entry, NTLDR!
It is easier to use Explorer under XP to position the necessary files. This could be done before booting the WinPE 3.0 CD to carry out the bootsect and bcdedit tasks.
The second source places the boot.wim in 'c:\boot'. I followed the first source and created 'c:\sources' to hold the boot.wim. So copy the newly created boot.wim to whatever path was (or will be) specified with bcdedit. The second file is boot.sdi which should be found in 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK 2.0\Tools\PETools\x86\boot\' or the like. boot.sdi needs to be copied to 'c:\boot'. The third and last file is bootmgr, which can be found in 'C:\Program Files\Windows AIK 2.0\Tools\PETools\x86\' or the like. Copy it to 'c:\'. Then boot the WinPE 3.0 disk and carry out the bootsector and BCD tasks.
... later...
Regards
