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 :)

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."

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...

Tech spec sheets...

Need to be made out of HTML.

I'll SED.EXE the text out of the generated scores and replace place-holder text in the tech spec HTML page... That should make generating spec sheets extremely easy...

Back to Voodoo...

Well... Guess I'm going back to Voodoo. To be in the R&D portion of it all along with maintaining the Voodoo softwaring and testing system.

To give you an idea about the inner workings of our softwaring process works:

1) Technician enters the customers WO number.
2) The computer pulls the system configuration from the database
3) The machine then reads the system configuration and installs the correct OS.
4) Upon reboot the machine parses the configuration and installs the cusomers chosen software and hardware drivers. For the hardware we follow the "failing gracefully" guideline. We actually enable SLI in all Nvidia configurations. The Nvidia drivers will detect that it should have SLI but in a single card configuration it will throw up a dialog box stating that SLI will be auto-disabled. And upon reboot the machine is correctly configured without adding any more detection/complexity. Ahhh, failing gracefully :)
5) Second QC is a script that checks all the "optical" portions of the computer. This includes things like paint color, tattoo's, liquid color, etc. Everything physical. This test, when I return, will start to include things like counting video cards, ensuring SLI and crossfire is enabled, etc.
6) Lastly is Haiti. Originally designed by Casey Inlow and myself, it is a comprehensive test suite of games, real-world and artificial applications. Artificial applications include CPU Burn, Prime 95, etc.

With HP, it will be nice and interesting to see what they think of all this work and effort. I'm sure they have some very smart guys who might just laugh at all of this effort, or they might be blown away...?

I guess time will tell... Very shortly.