well we have a post your screenshot thread so y not have a post your program list... im making this a proper recovery tool so im trying not to forget too much

ESSENTIALS:
notepad
wordpad
paint

progman (my deskop manager coz XPE and other shells are too slow, still use nu2menu as the actual shell)
nu2menu
PEloader (to get around 6 process problem)
barts networking plugin
USB storage support

FILE MANAGERS:
A43
winfile
ext2fs (in the incredibly off chance i ever need to recover files form a linux partition.... doesnt work yet tho, complainss about wow32.dll not being loaded?)

APPs:
partition magic 8
7-zip
acrobat reader 6
cdBurnerXP pro
putty
peregistryeditor (edit the local registry through pe... i.e not the 1 on the cd)
remote desktop connection client
bginfo
vOPT defrag


thats all for now... gonna add my PEXP installer (when i finish it... redone alot of the gui so it works better), a browser and ftp client, data recovery tools, disk imaging...

no1 else has a pe disk?

Most of us Corporate folks don't have much on our PE Disks. There is no need when you have a large network and the ability to access it from just about anywhere.

Quick booting and a streamlined PE disk is much more important than what is on it

Chris

i have evrything on this list

http://tinyurl.com/2tkoq

I agree with Chris, I only have 1 extra file outside of PE required and added drivers, that allow me to connect to our network where everything else resides. This makes it easier to update our OS load while I only need to update the PE disks when ever there is a new driver required.

Mike

I disagree with Chris.

We use PE to preinstall systems (with network connection), to test systems, to virusscan systems, to reque data etc (with or without network connection).

I would classify myself as a corparate user, but I have a lot packed on the PE disc:
* Preinstall functionality
* McAfee virusscan
* Total Commander
* Nero
* Filescavenger
* Partitionmagic
* Ghost
* CPU-Z/AIDA
* Memtest
* HD-Tune
* CPU stability test
* Nero CD Speed
* PC Angel
* PCI bus scan

On my PE CD I have;

* MS ResKit "Shutdown" utility,
* Windows Explorer
* Wordpad
* Notepad
* Calculator
* All "Standard" Control Panel Applets (Incl Ird!)
* Symantec Ghost
* MS IE (however not working properly at the moment)


I am surprised how few people using the "Windows Explorer" as a file manager!
Also using Explorer as a system shell ! (Looks and behaves like regular desktop windows, with Start menu, etc ! )

Currently working on getting IE to work on PE... Does anyone know a good way to generate a RAMDISK, and assign the drive letter to a variable?

Michael: im not useing explorer coz its too slow to load and i dont need it... have a look at the ramdisk plugin for bartPE, even if u dont use pebuilder im sure u can work out how to make te ram disk from that

It is easy and overed in another post in this forum. I believe SPAWN posted it. I had it working in regular PE as well.

superbikkel,

In a corporate environment where every thing you do has to go through a Change Mannagement process and be signed off by counless people... It does not pay to keep modifying the CD. It's simply easier to make changes on a network rather than have 50+ SA's yell at you because you have a new CD that they have to burn.

Granted... those tools are nice and usefull, but I'm not an SA... I am an Engineer. (No disrespect to those SA's out there. I started there too)

Chris

I am in the same boat here. I found it much easier to update things on the network then update the discs. Also, you run into the problem of the helpdesk techs not replacing the old discs when a new one comes out, even after being told to dispose of the old ones.

I solved that problem.

My PE loads a menu that connects to a server. When it's not able to connect to the server, the tools menu appears with some functions disabled, preinstallation is also disabled. It also compares the version of the CD with the minimum allowed version approved by the server. If I don't want a certain version to be used, I disable it by incrementing the minimum version on the server.

The techs can still use the old version with degraded functionality, but because of that, they all upgrade the CD .

Where are you setting this on the disk? Is it a tag file, environment variable or the like?

Mike

I do the same for version control.

I keep a file called VERSION.TXT. At the top is my version control data. See below.

[Version]
WINPE=1.2
Compiled OS Binaries=WIN2K3 STD
Build Version=3.9

After that is my change control data.

[Version History]

-----------------------
30-06-04 - Version 3.9
-----------------------
Chris Baksa - Updated Compaq/HP Raid Controller Driver (CpqCissm.sys). Adds support for the new 6i controller.
Chris Baksa - Updated the IBM ServeRaid Software to Version 7.0
Chris Baksa - Incremented the PE build Verison to 3.9.

ect... ect...ect...

My VB scripting that is on the CD when I compile retrevies the Version info from this file (in this case 3.9) and then checks the PE_VERSION.INI on the network which look like this...

[PECD_valid]
1.5=no
1.6=no
1.7=no
1.8=no
1.9=no
2.0=no
2.1=no
2.5=no
3.0=no
3.1=no
3.2=yes
3.5=no
3.6=yes
3.8=yes
3.9=yes

This way I have full contol over what version can and can't be used.

Once connected... all menus and software run from the server.


Chris