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add drivers and programs to WinPE 2.0


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#1 miles__ahead

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 12:22 AM

I bought an image backup program that gives a legal copy of WinPE 2.0 with license to modify to add drivers etc.. Unfortunately, the instructions amount to "copy the drivers to the Driver/Disk folder and create a new boot CD." Well, when you burn a new boot CD with those instructions, you get a CD with the files you copied just sitting there in the Driver/Disk folder. They are not incorporated in the boot image and needless to say the drive isn't recognized without dynamically loading it from an external USB using Drvload.

There's got to be a step that's omitted to add the files to boot.wim or wherever they are supposed to go. I really miss the days when you could just add an MBR save/restore program to a bootable Dos disk!! Why is this so complicated? Sheesh!! :)

Any help appreciated. I've found a few things about using imagex but they only seem to work half way through the tutorial. I can never seem to get the drivers to embed in the boot image.

I have Vista64 Home Premium with one of those "fake RAID" controllers, which doesn't help to make things easier.

#2 miles__ahead

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 01:08 AM

Ok, I see the fallacy of what I was trying to do. The DVD drive is on the same fake RAID controller I'm trying to access. All that gets loaded in the Ram Disk when I boot the WinPE disc is the stuff in boot.wim that BIOS knows how to boot. So what I need to do is get the contents of the Boot CD onto a USB Key drive.

#3 allanf

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 01:22 AM

... Unfortunately, the instructions amount to "copy the drivers to the Driver/Disk folder and create a new boot CD."


It sounds like peimg.exe is used to install drivers. The driver files must include an .inf file.

What do you mean "fake RAID"? Software RAID?

Regards

#4 miles__ahead

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 04:27 AM

Yes. For some reason the gurus at AMD decided it was a good idea to configure my single HD system as "Raid Ready" which means I can't see any info about the drive using SMART. How smart is that? :) It's one of those HP Phenom quad cores. I really like the machine but the HD configuration just makes me do more work afa backup and recovery goes.

Anyway, I set up on a USB key. It still won't automatically recognize the hd but at least I can use drvload to load the .inf from the USB key. I found MbrFix to save and restore MBR,. At least now I don't have to do the dummy partition trick. Although I'll probably leave it that way until I want to use the partition for something. :)

Just reading through the stuff MBR related today I found out why that "fixmbr" stuff does no good if you have a hosed partition table. All over the world people with hosed partition tables are booting the install disc and doing "fixmbr" and just sit there agape when it still doesn't boot!!! Sheesh!! :)

#5 allanf

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 05:01 AM

Anyway, I set up on a USB key. It still won't automatically recognize the hd but at least I can use drvload to load the .inf from the USB key.


If WinPE is loaded from CD and booted from writeable RAM, it ought to be possible to use drvload to add the driver to the online WinPE with the driver files on the CD (or x:\ RAM wherever the Driver/Disk is found).

The mbr stuff ... that sounds like it should be handled very carefully.

Regards :)

#6 miles__ahead

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 05:07 AM

It's not possible because the RAID controller also runs the DVD drive. The boot image can be booted and copied to ram because the BIOS knows how to do it. The rest of the CD is inaccessible. That's why I put the stuff on USB. USB is recognized without the RAID driver.

The MBR stuff used to be a simple matter of a Dos boot diskette. Looks like everything that used to be easy using a diskette has to be done with USB know, since it's read/write and CD isn't. Don't understand why we don't have cheap standard 100 MB floppies in these PCs.

#7 allanf

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 05:31 AM

It's not possible because the RAID controller also runs the DVD drive.


OK. Sorry. Such (unusual?) complications take a while to sink in. My motto - 'Keep it simple, stupid!" ... :) ...

If the driver files could be copied to the mounted Windows directory, they'd be available in RAM.

Tho' it seems you have worked around the issue.

Regards :)

#8 miles__ahead

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 03:46 PM

Yeah, I kept booting off the CD then searching for mysteriously disappearing files. :)
Only thing I can think of is they saw some benefit to setting the thing up so that all the drives run as some SCSI emulation or something. The HD performance is fairly good for an off the shelf system. Just a bit disconcerting when you can't get any info from a drive information or system information program other than 750 GB Sata. :)

Thanks for the replies.

#9 allanf

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 04:50 PM

Going back a few steps...

You have imagex. Do you have the Windows AIK?

You found a .wim file. Have you tried to mount it with imagex?

First run from the cmd:

imagex /info <your wim>

How many images sre in the .wim? One of them should be described as the boot index or boot image ... :) ...


Try to mount the boot image with:

imagex /mountrw <your wim> 1 <some mount directory you create say c&#58;\mount>

where the number 1 is the number of the boot image.


Then try (assuming you have the WAIK tools which include peimg):

peimg /inf=<your inf> /image=<say c&#58;\mount\windows>


To finish off:

imagex /unmount <your .wim> /commit


While the image is mounted, you can add whatever you need to the mount directory and it will end up in RAM x:\


Regards :)

#10 miles__ahead

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Posted 18 April 2009 - 10:48 PM

Thanks for the succinct instructions. The RAID driver loaded with no manual intervention. :)

#11 allanf

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Posted 19 April 2009 - 01:16 AM

Thanks for the succinct instructions. The RAID driver loaded with no manual intervention. :)


That's good to hear.

I trust you picked up the error in the unmount code ... :) ...

imagex /unmount <c&#58;\mount> /commit

Uses a path to the mounted image, not the actual .wim file.

Regards :)

#12 miles__ahead

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Posted 19 April 2009 - 03:12 AM

Once I made the analogy to Linux mount points it all made sense. Pretty straight ahead once you do one. Thanks again. :)

#13 allanf

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Posted 19 April 2009 - 03:23 AM

No worries... :) ...

If you still have issues with mbr, start a new topic. It might catch someone's eye.




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