Cool Geezery...will do. I'll see if I can make a Geezery/qc_metal hybrid and post my results here. Thanks for your permission on that!

Ok, I would like to be have the first image pre-selected by default. Is there a simple way to set that up so that when I only have one image in the directory I don't have to select it before I can apply it?

i get the following error when i try to use the browse function, i have copied comdlg32.ocx to program directory.

Line: 536
Char: 1
Error: The control could not be created because it is not properly licensed.
Code: 0

anyone can tell me what im doing wrong ?
TIA

I am also getting the error about commmon dialog control license... How can i resolve this issue. And secondly when i add the hta and images folder to winpe and i launch from wihtin pe the images dont load. The background does and the ico file but not the other images? Any suggestions? Aside from that this is an awesome hta def what i was looking for THANKS ALOT!!!

ok this looks like a good idea.

i have thrown your beta into a winre image. and all ok.

im going to have to rip large chunks of it out because my intention is to use the GUI as a replacement for my visual basic program to recover customers systems.

i need to block diskpart from ever touching partition 1. as this stores all of winre and the final installation image.

question: is it possible to get a progress bar to run instead of the ugly black box known as command promt? i'll look into it but if you know anything that could help, would be kool.

now one suggestion. if an image fails to deploy the ImageX.hta always reports that the image applied ok. could cause problems :/.

spose i need to brush up on my scripting skills.

but playing with your beta has inspired me to work on this further and give a nice front end for our customers.

try a search for 'wimmaster' has progress bar instead of cmd prompt.

is also one called 'gui imagex wrapper', doesn't have progress bars .. but just as good too.

both work good under 'winpe' or 'vistape'.

wimmaster can be found at this link http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...amp;#entry21075

I am having the same problems with the error on line 536 and 258 as well. I am using the comdlg32.ocx from my windows xp install, I do not have a copy on my server 2003 machine, and I did not find one mounting the vista install.wim either. I am using PE 2.0 btw. I have a cmd that copies all of the files and the img dir and it's contents to the X:\windows\system32 just to eliminate problems with the permissions. The img dir is there and correct, the only time I have problems I have is when I click on the browse button, I get those errors. If I could get that working, that would be uber slick!

Thanks guys for your work on these HTA's, they are going to be killer!

I also have all of the packages installed for PE 2.0

Anyway to make the list of found images inside of a wim file split up into multiple columns instead of 1 big one? I have a wim with about 21 images in it and so everything gets pushed off and the hta window is not scrollable.

I second that request ... My largest has about 13 and it is pushing everything off the page.

I third that request as I and my coworker have taken to going to a naming scheme like HP-1.wim HP-2.wim. I am working at a service centre and have like 130GB of image files. When I started here my coworker was operating from command line and not appending. I then found this forum and thread. I love this HTA and so does my co-worker. Thanks Geezery.

I played for 5 minutes with the css file and the HTA and the result is this. If someone needs advice on how to change their hta to look like this send me an email. You can find the address from the first post. I know this is not the best solution, bu I don't have the time to make the script changes right now.

Click to view attachment

Are you talking about Geezery's or my HTA? I think I'm going to revisit the comdlg issue. This might be something that an AutoIT script would be more suited to (just the browse function).

Also, it might be a good idea for me to post a separate thread so the support questions aren't confusing the two.

Rob

I released a new version. Read more from the first post.

I am getting an error running scripts on this page for the latest version
Line 219
Char 1
Error: Object doesn't support this property or method: 'objWim.source"
Code 0

I have tried registering the Gimagex.dll, got 2 different testing images both launching imagex.hta 2 ways. 1 is calling mshata then imagex.hta, whilst the other is just calling imagex.hta Both of these get the same message.

Ok, I have to look at the error you are getting.
The dll should be automaticly registrated.

There is some problems when defining the COM component like this.

<object ID="objWIM" viewastext style="display:none" CLASSID="CLSID:6DA4E9F4-B7A8-467F-B88D-588B456B2608"></object>

It doesn't seem to work under WinPE. I think I'll have to figure something else since it wonr work.

I updated the com based ImageX.hta, but there is currently no support for progress indicator. If you find a way to show the progress indicator it would be more than nice.

Thanks for this Geezery. It is working real nice now, shame about the progress bar. At least there is notification when it completes so you are not working completely blind.

Take a look at this: ImageX COM

The author of AutoIt wrote up a COM for imagex and made a GUI for it and shows a progress. Maybe you can implement the use of the COM to grab the progress???

The current release is using that COM component and it works nicely, but the progress bar doesn't work. If you find bugs please report them here.

I actually found one and I will repair it in the next version. I wish that I could some how show the progressbar also. I actually have the progress indicator working in the HTA if you are using it from the Windows XP or Vista. You just have to define the com component a bit different.

Sorry haven't tried your HTA in a while. So nothing from this code works? Can you get time remaining? If so could you use that to calculate progress????

Believe me I have tried almost everything what you can do with that COM component.



You cant define an object like this in HTA. It doesn't support multithreaded objects. I actually find another solution that works in Windows XP andVista but not in WinPE:(

What if you open up a VBS script window to display the progress rather right in the HTA itself would that work?? Or run it behind the HTA and have it put the output into a text file then have the HTA read the text file? Maybe name the text file what ever the percentage is and just have HTA refresh that directory showing the percentage (taken from the name of the text file)???? Just throwing some ideas out.

I believe it is possible to do something like that, but I don't have the needed time to write such script.

I just tried out the GimageX (COM Based) HTA today and have encountered an error.

Line:222
Char:1
Object Required: 'objWIM'
Code:0

it is this line:



Everything seems to work: I can select images or deploy them, but the image names within the WIM are blank. In my case, there are 2 WIMs and each only has 1 image in them. It shows a radio button after I select the image, but there is no words next to it.

EDIT: sorry, I didn't read the part in the first post that said to register the DLL... :\

It works now just fine.

OK I got a new question. I noticed in the HTA itself that there was a "setres" option cfg for 1024x768x32bit. I tried to make it 800x600 but it didn't seem to make a difference. While I did manage to image the ASUS EEE PC 701 with your GUI, it did not support the default resolution and I had to cmd prompt it manually.

Is the only thing that is keeping the 800x600 setting at 1024 because of the background PNG?

If you ran the Setses function without arguments it should automaticly select the optimal screen resolution.

The only problem is that the HTA GUI is using absolut positioning of elements so all the buttons etc. won't show up correctly.

Yep I saw that. The only machine that we needed the lower resolution was the EEE PC 701. With the recent news that the new EEE PCs will support 1024x768, this becomes a non-issue.

I've got a certain use for this program and wonder if it can do the job.

I'm a oem system builder that sells around 8 different models of systems at any given time.
For each system I do a preload of the following operating systems.

XP Home, XP Pro, Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premimum, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business X64, and Vista Ultimate X64.

All of these loads have the office 2k7 oem preload and the correct device drivers and updates for the system they are going on.

I'd like to keep each load in a seperate wim file and keep the wims in different directories for each motherboard.

Also I'd like the gimagex to see that the filename starts with xp and apply the mbr fix to the destination drive.


Is this possible with the framework of this program? (I.e. stripping out the need to select which image from the wim and always default to image 1, filename checking for xp. etc.)

This will be used in a pxe booting enviroment so the only hd in each system will be the destination drive.

Thanks for any input.


Mark

Using separate WIMs defeats the purpose of using WIMs altogether. You are best to use a separate WIM for each OS, so one for XP and one for Vista. This is decrease your storage requirements. Look into the command for appending images. The drop down menu shows images on the share in alphebetical order, although you could re-script it to show in another way. It also doesn't travel through directories, but you can have access to them via the browse button. I have not seen an SOP from Microsoft on WDS that says you should use subdirectories in your network share.

Ok, reading more the use of multpile sku per wims does make sense to me (Sorry, to much ghost on the brain).

But I'm still confused about imaging xp.
I see that there are problems doing a xp image because of the way diskpart formats the drive.

How does gimagex know that the image is a xp image and partition and format the drive correctly?
How does it know to lay down the correct mbr and bootsector?


Thanks.
Mark

Hello,

there is no currently any check for the image type. You just have to know what image is the appropriate for the current computer. You can i.e. save Vista images to separate wim file and Xp images to another.

I think it would be possible to add correct bootsector by using the WinPe builtin bootsect.exe.

I think I could include it in my next version. I'm also going to get rid of that browse.exe since the browseforfolder issue has been resolved in another post in this forum.

I could also make a script that could apply image unattendly to the computer by checking some values from the WMI. Of course there would have to be some kind of settings file i.e. xml file that says witch image to use on certain computer. If there is interest I could make one easily.

Ok, I've gotten some more experience with your program.
A few questions and feature requests.

I'd like to be able to define a variable in the file for a default diskpart action. i.e. set kill=1 to always run the custom diskpart.txt file without any prompts.
Also I'd like to be able to define a default apply path (c:) without prompting.


I see you are getting rid of browse.exe, would that get rid of when you select browse that it defaults to the c: (My wims are located on z:\wims, and that is the default set in the hta file.)

I'm getting around the xp deployment problem by hitting alt-f4 and running bootsect /nt52 c: after image deployment.

I'm going to try storing all os load for each motherboard in 1 wim for 32bit and 1 for 64bit.

Very nice tool and thank you for your hard work.
(I didn't look but do you have a paypal for donations?)

Later,
Mark

I'll think I could make a list of the requested changes and if you have some more please put them here:

- Remove the Browse.exe dependancy
- Support for ini file where users could make all the needed settings
- Support for the OS recognization to apply the correct boot sector
- Support for VNC connection to the HTA. (I need suggestions how I could implement this)
* I have already tested this feature and it works ok
* I'll think I could write an admin console with vb.net to support applying wims remotely
* What VNCserver I should use??

- I would also like to have the progress indicator working in WinPE environment, but I have no clue how to get it working.

Well we already know that imagex reports a percentage of the drive being completed when you do a capture or apply. You hide the cmd and show a progress bar instead. Either there is some way to get that info being reported by imagex or allow the cmdbox to appear but not as the active (ie open behind the HTA) window. If your script can read the %, you could apply the correct graphics for the progress bar.

Just a thought. Haven't a clue on how to implement but maybe it gives you an idea.

I had to remove the com objWIM.ApplyImage command and go with the command based imagex.exe because in a networked enviroment the objWIM.ApplyImage is locking the wim file. I needed to be able to deploy to multiple machines at once so the file being locked is a REAL show stopper.
I've send a message to the author of the GImageX_COM.dll to ask how to apply a image without locking the file.

The upside is I have a status indicator now.
(I'm showing the cmd window.)



Later,
Mark

I did also run into a problem with the capture ability. Truthfully, this won't be a big issue for our uses of it, however. We may end up removing some of the options when we switch to using WDS altogether because the regular software techs won't need to use the capture or any other advanced commands. Special projects or image creation would be handled by myself or management only, a task we wouldn't delegate to the the regular software people. So in other words, I always use the command prompt to capture images.

on my customized version you can run ghost32 reboot or shutdown.
All other options have been removed, also the tech has NO control over drive partitioning.
I've got it parsing the Image Description for any occurance of xp and if it finds that then it automatically runs the correct bootsect command.

Now all I need to do is add custom labeling of the destination drive (i.e. imagename) and get a real progress bar and then this program is perfect for my usage.
(I know how to do the custom label, I'm just taking a few days break from modifying the source)

Anyone know any examples on how to display the output of imagex to a popup window as a progress bar?

And after I'm done I'll be sure to upload it.

Later,
dabone

Hoping someone can help. I've taken the ghost image pe disk as the base, and want to add just the functionality of being able to apply imagex images or calling a batch file that already has the imagex switches and file name pre-populated.

What's the easiest way to do this with the least amount of code?

--------------

Update:
I've managed to get the two to coexist, but the default view seems too large for the screen. Loosing some of the icons on the bottom and right side, so suggestions on that front please help

It seems like you seek information on GhostExplorer? I can't think of how you have changed the GimageX... if you could put paint in your WIM, I wonder if it will let you take a screenshot and save it to a USB drive?

I'd like to make a note regarding all the talk about the progress bar.

I recently updated my PE image using the new servicing tools provided in the new OPK version. I am sure it made other changes, but one stood out. When you are upping or dropping an image now, instead of it updating the % and time remaining on a single line, it now draws a new line with the new % in 1% increments! This might make it easier to make the progress bar work? IDK but it sounds like a start.

If you were to use, say autoit, we know it can read stuff of the screen (like how people use it to make bots for games), but is this possible:

1. Press enter to start imaging drive C
2. gImageX does not suppress the cmd prompt it is running the command from, but puts it behind the HTA (window) layer.
3. The script read line info from the cmd prompt behind GImageX.
4. The progressbar determines how to display based on info received from script.

Obviously I am partly mixing up its screen reading functionality with its other features... I think, while I am on the subject, I will contact our rep to see if the PE puts that progress info into a memory location that can be read.

I have been experiencing intermittant issues with the progress bar itself. I know it doesn't "work" but when it is on the screen, you get a long gray rectangle, which is helpful because you know when it is imaging, or when its waiting for you to start it. Here are the different things I have seen concerning it, and the last one is a problem.

1 - regular long rectangular bar covering 75 (or 80) % of the screen
2 - regular length but only a couple pixels in height
3 - regular length but 3-4x regular height
4 - not appearing at all

I am wondering what can cause this. Its not resolution, as I've had 1, 2 and 4 happen at the same time on a bunch of same model notebooks. #3 was experienced on one PC in a group of 12 with the same CFG.

Hello and greetings from Portugal,

I was trying to use this HTA but when I launch it: mshta imagex.hta no application is launched. When I see task manager mshta is running but I don't see anything.

Can someone please help me?


Best Regards,
Soultaker

This is meant to be run from a WinPE environment, not your OS. This can be very dangerous to run from your OS! Unless you got Task Manager to appear in the WinPE.

Hi Tripredacus:

I'm using WinPE and I've launched Task Manager through taskmgr command-line. But now everything is working. Don't know why but the problem is no longe happening. I'm launching without the mshta.exe before, and it's running!

Excelent job this HTA.

I like it very much also.

I have made 2 different backgrounds for it also, if anyone wants to use them, feel free.

Nice Tripredacus. Very nice indeed! I would like to do some new ones too.

Again...

Funtastic work this one!

Just a good add-on would be a progress bar!

There is a progress bar but it does not work properly. It usually appears as a gray box that varies in size. Not sure why it varies. Some time it does not appear at all. I tried to fix it on my test server, but it resulted in it not opening the HTA at all so I gave up on it.

strange thing...

I've notice that when clicking on Map Network Drive the dialog box gets on top of the HTA and I cannot move it down again. I've tested this on a VM so I don't know if that's a problem with the VM.

Again, Keep Up the Good Work!