Friday, September 21, 2007

WinPE-SRT-Package

How to get it working here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/WinPE_SRT_Package_t104854.html

WinPE-SRT-Package -- gone. How to install it.

Part 1 of a miniseries.

While investigating ways to implement the WinPE-SRT-Package manually I found I would have to do the work myself as I found nothing out in the wild. I came across the following issues:

"Windows PE cannot start because the actual SYSTEMROOT directory (X:\Windows) is different from the configured one (X:\$Windows.~BT\Windows). This can be configured with peimg /targetpath..."


Digging into the registry I found this was because of 1 registry key. It's located here:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\pe_software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE]
"PrepStatus"=dword:00000001
"InstRoot"="X:\\$Windows.~BT\\"


What is needed is to change InstRoot to the directory below your Windows directory.

So, to enable this to work you'll need to set InstRoot=X:\

Why does Microsoft do this? So you can use a WinPE install off a harddisk with all the associated expanded files as oppoesd to a large WinPE image.

At least, that's what I've figured :)

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

A good quote

Dave Winer says, "To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accommodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don't win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch."

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Straighten' up shelves

Lots to do... Lots to do... Big things coming down the pipe.

At Voodoo, work progresses on trying to hasten and solidify the software system. This is an infinite effort and relatively stressful.

The testing system (Haiti) has hit its stride and has matured marvelously. We have a filtering system to not install programs that cause programs with certain hardware configurations (I'm looking at you, vendors!) or operating systems (Quake III and VISTA!). And this enables tests that only work on specific operating systems (ie, WinSAT).

Bugs to be worked out:
After Sysprep > WinSAT hangs on first boot (started by MSOOBE.exe). Current work-around is Shift-F10 > taskmgr.exe > Processes tab > End Process on WinSAT. You can rerun WinSAT later. Cause of this TBD.

This problem is described in this links...

http://forums.windowsvistamagazine.com/forums/thread/2343.aspx

Odd that we see it on fresh systems...

More testing is needed...