[Turge]

here's something for the adventurer's out there.

I wanted to figure out how to boot BOOT.WIM to RAM through RIS instead of the ISO for obvious speed/file size reasons. Using TFTP32, I was able to determine what files it was looking for and copy them from Vista Server. I can now boot PE in about 30 seconds.

Here is are the files I copied from Vista Server:

[RemoteInstall\Boot]
boot.sdi
[RemoteInstall\Boot\x86]
abortpxe.com
boot.ini
bootmgr.exe
hdlscom1.com
hdlscom1.n12
hdlscom2.com
hdlscom2.n12
pxeboot.com
pxeboot.n12
wdsndp.com
[RemoteInstall\Boot\Images]
boot.wim
boot.wim.boot.ini
[RemoteInstall\tmp]
ia64.2005.09.28.19.50.49.boot.ini
x64.2005.09.28.19.50.49.boot.ini
x86.2005.09.28.19.50.49.boot.ini
x86x64.2005.09.28.19.50.49.boot.ini
[RemoteInstall\Setup\English\Images\VistaPE\i386\templates]
pe.sif

Contents of pe.sif

[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\WINDOWS\"
OsLoadOptions = "/RDPATH=net(0)\Boot\x86\Images\boot.wim /RDSDIHDRPATH=net(0)\Boot\boot.sdi /DETECTHAL /MININT /USENEWLOADER"
Architecture = "%MACHINETYPE%"

[RemoteInstall]
Repartition = no

[OSChooser]
Description = "Vista PE"
Help = "Install Vista WinPE"
LaunchFile = "\Boot\x86\pxeboot.com"
Version = "5.2 (0)"

One thing I had to do was mount the 2nd image of boot.wim (Server v5219) and rename source\setup.exe to setup.bak

This post has been edited by Turge: 16 November 2005 - 02:23 PM

[gadget]

I know i'm digging this one up from the grave but,,,,,

What I am attempting is to get a winpe 2.0 or 3.0 to boot using RIS. I like the 'oschooser' menu system in RIS.

Using the above actually loads the wds start screen again showing the options of wims available and the Remote Installation.

I have tried using custom BCD's ect but keep getting back to the same wds screen.

Has anyone acheived booting winpe 2/3 through RIS?

[Atheros]

gadget, on Nov 10 2009, 06:46 PM, said:

I know i'm digging this one up from the grave but,,,,,

What I am attempting is to get a winpe 2.0 or 3.0 to boot using RIS. I like the 'oschooser' menu system in RIS.

Using the above actually loads the wds start screen again showing the options of wims available and the Remote Installation.

I have tried using custom BCD's ect but keep getting back to the same wds screen.

Has anyone acheived booting winpe 2/3 through RIS?

just to simplify your task a bit.

you should use WDS to boot wim images and use WDS to load RIS if need be, it has a legacy section.

[gadget]

Thanks, I know, we have been running WDS in mixed mode since release.

The thing I am attempting is to enter a eight digit code into the RIS OSchooser screens, this then loads a custom PE1.x image. With PE2 and above, you can only get a list menu so when updating a core PE2/3 image, I can only hope that the legacy computers still work, and in the most part they do. If I keep adding PE images to the WDS then the list gets stupidly long and the engineer can easily select the incorrect image.

We have 600 systems a day connecting to WDS or RIS, different models and manufactures, so managing a PE2/3 image is a nightmare. The above restarts the WDS process from RIS but displays all the PE2/3 options. I have nearly got there, just need to isolate and load the required BCD file, just cannot get the bootloader to change location from \\reminst\boot........