I've been looking around the forums and my toolkit and it appears that Microsoft's build of WinPE (WinXP SP2) is nothing more than a proprietary piece of crap. 4051PE functions better than this! WTF?! O_o

I have experience with the following PE's made from:
Windows XP Pro SP1
Windows XP Pro SP2
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 SP1
Windows LH Pro 4051 (i386 exploit)
Windows LH Pro 4074 (i386 exploit)

I've had experience with the following BartPE builds:
Windows XP Pro SP2
Windows .NET Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 SP1
Windows LH Pro 4051

I look back on builds from NT to 2000 needless to say that I'm not even going to bother with them. I can't get my Windows XP builds to accept an installation within a Windows environment right now, so building a PE from XP is out. I've only gotten MCE to do that and it doesn't look like anything that can work so I drop it. I'm trying my best to stay away from BartPE since it's about as bad as the XP OPK. The OPK has to be the worst piece of crap that I've ever messed with. If I try to alter the registry settings or try running a program the whole OS just craps out. Not even a bluescreen/greenscreen just instant crash.

I look at the way LH builds a PE and the directories/files listed with this method would probably work with XP, 03 and possibly the Vista beta. My only issue with it is that nothing after Server 2003 has had a PE that supports more than 16 colors. Is there any way around this? Is there any way to build an XP PE using Longhorn's directory style? Don't tell me I'm the only one here that has ever thought of this.

I say it's feasible to build a PE from Windows XP that works. It can be extracted from Longhorn and Vista beta 1, so how can it be extracted from a previous operating system?

hmm i use didgiwiz minipe 2005 09.03 ( i dont give the link to anyone ^^ )
build with barts PE and runs fine

M$ PE is ... crap thats true

What WinPE build tools are you using (what service pack did they ship with)? That will have a 1:1 correlation on how well your resulting WinPE build works. Or doesn't.

I'll leave it at that since I have a few ideas why...lol

Waffle status: Roffled.

But why does it function like a piece of crap?! It's a straight up rip of VRMPVOL_EN right?

Windows. Really....That's it. =/ Aside from Nero to burn an image and vmware to test...That's all.

0.0

Well that's good to know.
Right now I'm fixing a seriously broken build(4051) of Windows. Explorer doesn't function right, taskbar doesn't show...task manager doesn't like to show when pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc...Maybe I should just move straight to Vista and recognize problems there...

Anyway there is one critical thing I notice in XP/03 vs. LH:
VGA driver sucks. What is the bootvid process that XP goes through and why is it so much better than anything stamped with NT6?

What you wrote doesn't quite make sense. To build WinPE, you have to have build tools. The OPK, an ISV or Enterprise version of WinPE build tools, something. Mkimg.cmd, oscdimg.exe, and all the other tools used to build WinPE. What version of those are yours? They MUST be as new or newer than the version of Windows you are building from, or you are guaranteed to have problems.

WinPE wasn't designed to support Explorer. Unless you're adding a ton of undocumented dependencies, it will fail.

Frankly I don't know why you'd spend much time working on Vista WinPE. It's a ball of twine right now - especially a build as ancient as 4051...

To the average programmer, it rarely does.

This is exactly why I haven't been able to build a PE off of XP quite yet. Everything else has been simple.

I currently have the Windows XP OPK. The tools in the OPK are what I have used between XP and Server 2003.

8/4/2004 4:00 AM

I would say that's a given. I avoid them. ^-^'

I have had it work before....ONCE. O_o
I can't remember what I did in September but I'm sure some documentation in this forum has something to do with it. It's time for me to start digging.

I'm messing with 4051PE just because I can. It has a few exploits that are worth messing with but I'm dropping it because it's primarily just a lot of broken code. I'm done playing with it. The way 4051PE is built is sort of a pattern I'm trying to follow when making other PEs. 5219PE is going to be using this method when I get around to it. Uber new hax or intermittent crashes?...We'll see how it turns out.

But before I do anything with it, I'm going to see if I can still do stuff to the XP OPK. It's my only resource for XPPE right now and I'm going to take another shot at modifying it. I know I had it working once before, I wonder what I did wrong.

Actually, not quite true. You need an editor (notepad will do), a windows cd, and a way to create the hives.
I've managed to do this, a bootable pe, with about 30mb.
I've used perl to parse the infs and create the hives. Then I modified them (set a shell) with reg.exe.
Using cdrtools, i created an iso wich booted.
Just to prove it was possible to do without the OPK or BartPE.
I've also modified the txtsetup.sif to lower ram requirements, ignore acpi and not load scsi drivers.

<3!

Wow... I wish I had the free time that you do to run that test.



Chris

Yes! That is definitely a given. I have spent much time messing with this. Some people decompile Windows builds to understand how it works....Txtsetup is more than enough for me...lol. If you remember the process Win3.1 went through, I think you'll look back and say "N00bed!" o_O
Kekekekeke!

In any case it's a lot of hit and miss when testing. For some reason adding the folder "Profiles" anywhere on the disc root or i386 will cause my builds to halt at startup and die. I'm not sure what's causing this but I know Explorer is to blame.