[DrHoang]

If you are always bothered of buying CDRW to test burning a new XPE.iso, the best ways for you I think is to install XPE in your hard disk. That would have a lot of conveniences for you ulteriorily if you already installed 2 windows in your hard disk ( C: XP and D : 2000 with FAT 32 for two of them).
I)Install XPE in another primary partition than C: is always better than in the same partition by enjoying a lot of of benefits following:
1) Stay in one windows, you could ghost or restore the other one’s( even with Norton Ghost 90 ) too easily, you are no need of rebooting to work in WinPE environtment.
2) Go to Windows 2000 in the D partition , you could see J partition ( hidden of XPE ) and you could update all changes of a new XPE.iso( from F: to the old in J: ) easily and speedily, And you are no need of buying any CDRW to test XPE.iso.
3) Working within J partition ( or X: if it is are active partition unhidden ), you could edit nu2menu.xml or any programs easily because of a written hard disk not read only like CD .
4) The booting time in hard disk is so much speedier than ever: 1 minute 30 secondes ( compared with 4 minutes 30 secondes in CD or 10 minutes in USB flash Drive ).



5) You could read my ways to install XPE in another primary partition than C and create MS-DOS in my former topic:
http://www.msfn.org/...showtopic=53599
Don’t try to test peinstall plugin of Bart’s if your aren't an expert. You have the big risk to erase all upur precious data in C partition if you mistyped some lines.
6) You could get rid off 2 plugins in XPE: dospe ( waste of time to find a lot of files but it seems useless because of not a real DOS ) and peinstall ( too risky ) .
II) Why not installing XPE in the same partition C: Big reasons are the following:
1) You will have a bigger partition C with 2 installing( XPE and XP ) and when your are need of saving C partition with ghost , it becomes so big ( usually over 1.5GB in size )
2)While working with XPE, although it also boots speedily ( 1 minute 30 secondes) but the real tetchy problem is C partition reserved for XP is incorporated together with XPE in their common X: partition ( by character of XPSP2 ).
3) Sometimes in update the new programs for XPE, you would get mixed between Programs ( XPE ) and Program Files (XP) and Documents and settings .
III) Why not installing XPE in USB Flash Disk: The main reasons are the following:
1)The booting time to USB Flash Drive is so long over 10 minutes ( compared with 1 minute 30 secondes in hard disk .
2) You are always a real need of a bigger Flash Disk: over 526MB or 1GB. If not, you could install a miniPE or microPE in USB flash Drive.
3) The copy time of all files to USB flash Drive is also long with Fafot’s way( 100 o/o success ): 10 minutes .
4)If you use pe2-usb.cmd , you will get the usual bug is not finding ntldlr or boot.ini during the processof making pe-usb. That is not easy to override this problem.
IV) Reduce the making all autoboot XPE CD or DVD by this way :
1) If you already install XPE to another partition than C, you could reduce making XPE CD in minimum. So that , it is not wasting a lot of money to buy any CDRW disk in the future.
2) The booting time to XPE in CD is longer than in hard disk ( usually 4 minutes 30 secondes or more ) compared with 1 minute 30 secodes in hard disk ).
3)Testing the boot time is much easier, speedier in hard disk than CD ( no required of testing with Vnware or Virtual CD anymore )
V) Conclusion:
After reading my topic I hop you would choose the best solution for you in installing XPE. Could you disagree with me, but how you are not wasting a lot of money to buy CDRW anymore? : That is the principal or really convenient way for all of us..
D Hoang from Vietnam

This post has been edited by DrHoang: 27 August 2005 - 09:27 PM

[kilimats]

lol

never heard about vmware

[mats]

I'll quote myself

According to MS you need to install recovery console to boot PE from boot.ini

Well, there is another way of doing this. i prefer the new ramboot style so that will be used in this example. The iso filename should be max 8.3 according to noodles so i used test1.iso. Ofcourse you can name it whatever you like.

1. Grab a copy of mkbt and nt2peldr from bart
2. make a working ramdisk booting pe iso, place it in c:\ with the name test1.iso
3. copy setupldr.bin from a server2003sp1 disc to c:\peldr
4. run mkbt -c -x c: c:\peboot.bin
5. run nt2peldr c:\peboot.bin
6. Edit boot.ini and add a line
c:\peboot.bin="PE From ram"
7. Create a winnt.sif file with the following in it
[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=test1.iso"
Architecture = "i386"

A little Easier i think, Or just simply use virtual pc

[DrHoang]

[quote name='kilimats' date='Aug 28 2005, 02:43 PM']
lol

never heard about vmware
Hi Kilimats,
Vmware 50 is working in the ways of Virtual CD helping you see the boting time any ISO.
Dr Hoang

[DrHoang]

[quote name='mats' date='Aug 29 2005, 12:40 AM']
Recovery console is used to add MS-DOS menu to XPE but no real need if you would only like booting to XPE ( hard disk ).
Could you ever boot PE.iso from RAM with a size 700MB or over that size: to 1GB ? only install PE to hard disk help you do that?
Virtual CD helps you see a booting time( captured ) only but you never test your Sound card, modem or hard disk easily like in hard disk.
Dr Hoang

This post has been edited by DrHoang: 29 August 2005 - 08:56 AM

[mats]

I' ll quete myself again
According to MS you need to install recovery console to boot PE from boot.ini
I do present a better solution in the rows below.

If you need to boot a larger pe than 256MB you have a very bad design. Fix that first. A Pe image cabable of handeling about a hundred diffrent hw plattforms, loading images, resizing disks and loading firmware can be assambled in less than 200 mb. Every unnedded mb takes time to load and if you got 20K plus workstations, that counts

You dont need to include images or installation folders on the iso. You call theese from pe using variables. That saves time and space but requires some coding skills

[AndeeOPT]

mats, on Aug 28 2005, 11:40 AM, said:

I'll quote myself

According to MS you need to install recovery console to boot PE from boot.ini

Well, there is another way of doing this. i prefer the new ramboot style so that will be used in this example. The iso filename should be max 8.3 according to noodles so i used test1.iso. Ofcourse you can name it whatever you like.

1. Grab a copy of mkbt and nt2peldr from bart
2. make a working ramdisk booting pe iso, place it in c:\ with the name test1.iso
3. copy setupldr.bin from a server2003sp1 disc to c:\peldr
4. run mkbt -c -x c: c:\peboot.bin
5. run nt2peldr c:\peboot.bin
6. Edit boot.ini and add a line
c:\peboot.bin="PE From ram"
7. Create a winnt.sif file with the following in it
[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=test1.iso"
Architecture = "i386"

A little Easier i think, Or just simply use virtual pc

mats,

I followed your instructions but have a issue.
Using what you said I now have a dual boot menu with Windows XP Pro and WinPE listed.

However, when I try to go into the WinPE, I get NTLDR is missing, hit CTL+ALT+DEL

I suspect my WINPE RAM image but I have tested it and it is ok.
I can burn the iso to a cd and it works and I have tried replacing the "NTLDR" file with the setupldr.bin from my WinPE RAM image (renamed to NTLDR of course). Doing this causes WINPE to boot and it is ok but the dual boot menu does not appear at all.

Here is some info that my help:

single HDD with 2 partitions
1 x 500MB partition for WINPE
1x remaining space for WINXP

WINPE RAM image made using Win2003 server + sp1 as source
winnt.sif is exactly the same as yours except for the ISO filename.

Please help.

This post has been edited by AndeeOPT: 07 November 2006 - 08:47 PM

[AndeeOPT]

no need to worry - I solved my issue.

There is alot of information about installing, running & setting a Multiboot system (with & without WinPE as RAM) but none seem to be "complete" and go through the entire process and what files need to be where for WinPE as a RAM image.

I managed to find another post and the user had the same problem as I did.
Thankfully, he sorted his out himself and this turned out to be what I had done wrong as well.

Basically, I had made my ISO image with Win2003 SP1 source files but I installed recovery console from a WinXPSP2 source. Simply installing RC from the Win2003SP1 source and then copying the new BOOTSECT.DAT from the cmdcons folder fixed the problem and all was fine.

I would like to ask though, to close WinPE you type "exit" and this restarts the PC.
Is there a way to change it so when "exit" is typed it instead shutdown the PC?

[mats]

A little late but i have what i thougth was a complete walkthrough posted on this forum.

I would suspect that the easiest way to fix a shutdown is to use shutdown.exe or psshutdown.exe