[chiners_68]

Cheers Geezery,
Ive just noticed from running imageX from the cmd line it verifys. microsft have obviously built that in. Im looking for away of turning it off but I dont think that is going to be possible.

What sort of times do others get copying & image to a network share..? a 40GB drive with 14GB of used space took 2 hours to create an image on my network. If I use my old drive image I can do it in 10 mins.

Ill try the cmd line for setres when this image im doing has finished.

[chiners_68]

SETRES worked Ok from the cmd line.

Ive now updated the hta file & I got an error

line 463
char 1
type mismatch 'do task'

this is when the GUI loads & I get the same erro when I now click on your cmd window button.

i think ill reset the setres to the supress error & run set res from startnet.cmd

This post has been edited by chiners_68: 06 August 2007 - 03:00 AM

[chiners_68]

setting
setres 1024 768

in the startnet.cmd just before your GUI loads worked.

regards

[chiners_68]

Right, Im creating XP images OK but when I restore one it wont boot into Xp. i think its possibly due to the 15GB c partition & the orginal partition size is 60GB.

how can I set diskpart.txt so I only get 1 partition & the whole size of the HDD. i dont want to diskpart to a specific size as various models of machine have different size HDD's. I want it always to do a single partition the whole size of the drive.

[geezery]

Sample diskpart.txt file for only one partition

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
assign letter=c
format fs=ntfs label="system" quick
active
exit

If you got problems booting to new applied system try to manually put the first partition active
type diskpart from the command line:

select disk 0
select partition 1
active

If you had vista bootsector before. you must use the bootsect.com utility witch comes along with WAIK.

bootsect /nt52 c:

This post has been edited by geezery: 06 August 2007 - 10:34 AM

[p4ntb0y]

@Geezery

Why add the sel partiton 1 then do the assign?

sel disk 0
(sets focus to disk 0)
clean
create part pri (This is part 1)
active
assign letter = blah
format fs=ntfs label="System" quick

or do the format out of diskpart

I know there are allways more than one way to do things.

[chiners_68]

so this will make a partition the whole disk size no matter how big the disk is?

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
assign letter=c
format fs=ntfs label="system" quick
active
exit

The dell units im installing had xp on previous. Im just repartioning & reimaging.

[powaking]

Is it "safe" to do a quick format or is it best to do a full format? This part seems to take a LONG time and anything to speed it up would help. Is there another tool that would do a quicker full format?

[FredBeagle]

This is from M$

"When you choose to run a regular format on a volume, files are removed from the volume that you are formatting and the hard disk is scanned for bad sectors. The scan for bad sectors is responsible for the majority of the time that it takes to format a volume.

If you choose the Quick format option, format removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard disk is not damaged."

[chiners_68]

Geezery,
is there any chance of you adding some options for partitioning when installing an image. A few simple selection would surfice.

1. Selection for 1 partition or 2
2a.Tickbox for full drive partition if only one partition slected.
2b.A box next to this if you want to specify partition size for the 1 partition.

3. If two partition are slected you have two boxes for partition sizes with a tick box next to partition 2 to just fill the rest of the drive after size of partition 1 is set.

If I could write code i would do it but i havent got a clue.


regards

chiners_68

This post has been edited by chiners_68: 07 August 2007 - 04:46 AM

[chiners_68]

any chance of adding a delete button so you can remove a wim file or an image contained in the wim fie..?

[solutionone]

the simple partitioning options has my vote.

I would like the options....

1. Leave disk as is (no changes at all) just just imagex
2. Wipe the drive, create one large partition and format (quick)
3. Wipe the drive, create one large partition and format (regular)
4. Custom (opens diskpart.txt with an example of 2 partitions)

also I was wondering if you could add an option to choose the drive letter to apply the image to when clicking install.

keep up the excellent work geezery.

[geezery]

I'm currently coding some new features to imagex gui, but I won't release the next version until I have tested it properly. Maybe I could give it to someone who likes to test new features and report bugs.

Here is a list of upcoming updates:

Still developing:

-New diskpartition options when applying image

 diskpart.JPG (18.25K)
Number of downloads: 60

-Mounting & Unmounting of images in Windows XP and Windows Vista

Ready:

-Ability to choose drive letter where to apply image
-Support for Windows XP and Vista
-Made some huge bug fixes to gui
-Possibility to add a company logo to gui easily

This post has been edited by geezery: 22 August 2007 - 05:40 AM

[MAVERICKS CHOICE]

@ geezery look forward to it.

[t00fan]

geezery, on Aug 22 2007, 05:16 AM, said:

I'm currently coding some new features to imagex gui, but I won't release the next version until I have tested it properly. Maybe I could give it to someone who likes to test new features and report bugs.

Here is a list of upcoming updates:

Still developing:

-New diskpartition options when applying image

diskpart.JPG

-Mounting & Unmounting of images in Windows XP and Windows Vista

Ready:

-Ability to choose driver letter where to apply image
-Support for Windows XP and Vista
-Made some huge bug fixes to gui
-Possibility to add a company logo to gui easily

I would be more than happy to test it out for ya. Let me know.

dharmesh (dot) topiwala (at) gmail.com

[solutionone]

good to hear news on this great project,

The new features sound awesome especially the new partitioning system, if you do need an early adopter to test, I have several test machines I can play with.

the only other features that would be nice having are the following

1. Fault Detection e.g. Recently I started a capture of a working system as a backup before a rebuild, the chkdsk completed successfully and the imagex started processing directories/files and I went off to lunch, happy and content, when I got back it was up to the "click OK to reboot....). which I did and then rebuilt the PC, what I forgot to do, which I normally make a point of, is checking to make sure the WIM is actually there. Unfortunately it wasn't.

now I know this HTA just runs the imagex command so if an error message popups when unattended it is missed. is there a way for you to modify the hta to check that the wim file (that was specified when the capture is started, is actually at the specified location. (e.g. performing a dir/s filename.wim or something). this feature would be invaluable.


2. excludes system, e.g. picking a text file to set the files/folder to be excluded. or failing that, an easier way to set custom excludes.

On a side note, Does anyone know if it is faster to boot windows pe from a usb key (USB 2.0) or a CD-ROM?

This post has been edited by solutionone: 25 August 2007 - 01:10 AM

[geezery]

Quote

/config configuration_file.ini
The name and location of the configuration file. You can rename this file, as necessary.

Note:
If you rename your Configuration_list.ini file to Wimscript.ini and store it in your ImageX directory (where the ImageX.exe file is located), it will automatically run when you run the /capture option, without requiring you to use the /config option.

I tooked that one from the MS ImageX Command-Line options.

There is now three volunteers who likes to test the new version. I will put it in your mail next week. I think that, there is about 200 lines of new code, so there must be something to fix.

[solutionone]

ah, I missed the wimscript.ini post.. must be blind.

I edited my last post with my other request whiile you were posting the above reply, hopefully you didn't miss my almost begging request for some basic fault checking when capturing.

regards

[geezery]

Can you explain me a bit the nr. 1. request. So you captured c: drive to new .wim image and eventually you didn't have the wim file specified?

I don't catch the problem??

I think the USB boot is a lot quicker if the target computer supports high speed usb on the boot. But if it uses USB 1.1 then the CD-boot method is a lot quicker.

[solutionone]

Thanks for the USB advice,

The basic issue, is that at the moment when running a capture, unless you sit there and watch the progress to make sure no error messages pop up/imagex crashing. Once the imagex command is complete (regardless of success) the HTA pops up a message saying the image is complete, and to press okay to reboot (or something like that, I can't remember the exact wording)

the problem being sometimes the image wasn't successfull and there is no indication anything went wrong.

what I would like if possible, is for the HTA to remember the specified wim path/filename and check to make sure the image is actually there after the imagex capture command has been processed,

so instead of saying the current "complete, press okay to reboot....(or whatever it says exactly at the moment)" it should say: image PATH\FILENAME.wim successfully captured and verified (just a simple check to see if this file is actually where it should be and exists), press "OK" to reboot or "CONTINUE" to return to Imagex HTA.

this last little bit of simple fault checking would be a huge help for me, normally I make a habbit of quiting the HTA or openning a command prompt and checking for the file manually after a capture, but the one time I forgot as I was in a hurry, the capture had failed and I didn't notice until I had formatted the drive, installed Windows and then went to recover some data. (bugger)