Hey everyone,

I was just given a large amount of Auto-It scripts that my boss wants converted into WSH so it will run in WinPE. (I don't know why, and right now is not a good time to ask him).

Has anyone been able to get compiled Auto-It scripts to run in WinPE? If so, that would make my next few weeks so much better

If so, how did you do it?

Again, this is mostly wishful thinking. I think I have not tried it with BartPE, however the company I work for doesn't like to use BartPE, our legal dept has issues with the license agreement (they are paid to be a bit paranoid).

Thanks for any replies!

I imagine it would be possible, I haven't used AutoIT much myself - but the infrastructure seems pretty simple. I'm not sure it would be terribly useful under WinPE, since most of the UI you will use under WinPE for deployment (in any automated way) is Windows setup or an imaging tool - most of which are scriptable anyway, and don't have much in the way of UI.

Regarding BartPE, you are lucky to have a legal department with that much insight - given that BartPE basically has no license agreement, and puts you in a hazy legal place with the world's largest software company...

Yeah, they give us a bit of extra job security


The scripts he gave me are basically scripts that prompt the user for data specific to their situation (we have some clients that need a restore CD for their office computers located at their resturants [excuse the spelling]) And they have a specific guideline for computer name, company name and user name that is used during setup. The script I am referring to asks for their store number, and dell service tag and generates an answerfile that can be used with an unattended install of Windows.


Currently he has been using them to run sysprep at the end of the unattended install (using generic info) when windows is completely loaded, to gather the info and automate sysprep... but this is a longer process...

I am just experimenting with ideas untill my legal dept clears the use of WinPE this way.

Ah - depending on what you want, you may want to actually convert to HTA when/if you can - you can whip up a decent wizard under WinPE and ask the user for info from a relatively decent HTML UI.

Thanks for the suggestion, I've never worked with HTA files before, but they don't seem to complicated.

I'll do some searching for some HTA references...

Do you happen to know of any editors that include HTA text color coding? I've been using Crimson Editor for most of my programming... but I don't think it supports HTA syntax (for the color code).

Thanks for the help.

I have gotten both compiled and non-compiled AutoIT scripts working in PE. All I needed to run the non-compiled scripts were the files that are installed when you install AutoIT on your PC. I did not need to register anything.

Unfortunately I don't. HTA never seemed to catch on the way MS probably thought it would... Though I use it regularly...

Does your editor color code HTML? If so, just link your HTA to it. I use editplus and created an entry in the INI file for HTA's and used the HTML syntax.

Thanks for the replies!

I did a bit of reading on HTA and finally realized that HTA is HTML with a few extra HTA options availiable.

I appreciate the info, I am working on converting the scripts. I will also try to use the files that came with AutoIt to get the scripts running in WinPE, I will let you know the exact procedure if I get it working...

Thanks for the advice mbouchard! I don't know why I didn't think about injecting those files onto my CD....

My first plan was using HTA for building a menu for our automated server installation. But I am not a coder and the syntax of activex confused me. I found out that version 3 of autoit supports building graphical applications. So I tried that and found out that as long as I do not try to use pictures in my autoit-graphical-programs they work fine. Just the plain EXE and your done.
I inserted support for the WSH, ADO and HTA using BUILDOPTIONALCOMPONENTS.VBS. Since I want to access a database (SQL server or MDB file) I had to program database access functions in VBS to compensate Autoits lack of DB support. Very dirty solution (and a bit sad that I once again managed to get around learning VB, VC or maybe something more modern). I did not manage to get the MDB file support working under WinPE but SQL support is enough.

Your initial question was to use all your created Autoit scripts in WinPE. I don't see any problem. It have Autoit scripts on my disc and on a network share I conncet to. It works as desired. Do you get error messages? Or what's the problem?

Just as an aside, Mamba - the ADO support that buildoptionalcomponents adds is just for SQL - since that's all that natively comes with Windows. To add MDB (Jet) support has been done, but requires manually hacking in MDAC. Not fun.

I think my Auto-It issue is related to my inability to run complet binaries in WinPE.

I am looking for an older verion of WinXP to build me WinPE disc from, one of our over zealous admin assitants destroyed all the XP CDs that were not SP2... and I don't think you can un-slipstream a service pack from a CD. I have one on order

Thanks for the comments, I will post back when I try the new (old) CD.

@duomenox

Can't you just slipstream SP2 into whatever disc you have now?



Hope this helps.