In courses 5119 and 5105 they keep on talking about the different ways of deploying Vista images. Either by DVD or by Network share or by USB.
Taking into respect that your images will be several GB big, even in compressed state, USB sounds like a good alternative when using unswitched networks or slow 10/100 MB ones.
If you're not using PXE and SMS to push out the images you will need a version of Windows PE to help along the way. Now I'm a minimalist and hate having a CD with PE and a USB disk with my image. Why not have it both on the usb and boot from it directly?
Before you embark on that journey keep in mind that not all computers boot from USB! So make sure your environment is going to support your new deployment mechanism! Otherwise many hours will be going down the drain as your great and fancy bootable drive will never get used!
Before you go around all the forums and create a bootable usb disk with HP tools and windows 98 remember that you have the power of Vista at your finger tips. Well, should have! The new version of DiskPart that comes with the AIK detects usb flash disks and usb hard disks as if they were fixed disks. Thus you can clean them, repartition them, set them to active and format them with your desired FileSystem (NTFS). Once prepped all you need to do is copy the contents of your favourite WinPE ISO or WinRE ISO (see post from yesterday) onto the disk and you're up and running.
VistaPC Guy has a great step by step article on putting WinPE on your usb. read it here:
http://www.vistapcguy.net/?p=71
Showing posts with label WinPE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WinPE. Show all posts
Friday, April 4, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
5118 Vista Recovery Environment ISO File
I've been prepping 5118 as well as 5119 and came a cross a great idea. How about creating a real startup failure and recovery process for the students in the lab instead of using the simulation.
Following things you will need to do for this:
1) create a copy of one of the lab machines (Vista-CL1-02 is as good as any)
2) capture your favourite PE, RE or Vista Insall ISO
3) delete a super important system file like the winload.exe
4) make sure to save the changes by merging the disks
Ok, Maybe step 2 is not as easy as it sounds. So here is some help along the way:
Vista PC Guy has a nice article on creating PE images, where he also talks about creating bootable USB versions. http://www.vistapcguy.net/?p=71
But we want a recovery image and not a PE image. More importantly we need the Startup Recovery tools "srt" loaded at startup. This is what you do:
1) Follow PC Guy's teps 1 thru to 8 to create a clean winpe image. Or use the one you extracted out of the 5119 course iso file using WinRar or PowerISO or IsoBuster or whatever ISO app you like.
2) Add the RE tools to the image by using the BuildWinRE tool located in the "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Recovery" folder. Remember to use the WinPE Command Prompt instead of the standard one to have all paths properly loaded. It is as simple as defining the source and destination. In my case (having created the pe folder myself using AIK) it looked like this:
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Recovery>BuildWinRE /source "C:\winpe_86\ISO\sources\boot.wim" /target "C:\winpe_recovery\ISO\sources\boot.wim"
3) final step is to take this RE image and make a bootable ISO file using oscdimg:
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools>oscdimg -lVistaRecovery -b"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\boot\etfsboot.com" -n -h c:\winpe_recovery\iso winrecovery.iso
Important here is to remember to reference the etfsboot.com, otherwise the iso won't start at bootup.
That's all, now you can start up your virtual machine using the recovery console, start the command prompt, and kill c:\windows\system32\winload.exe and then close the machine commiting changes.
The next time your student will start up that machine he/she'll see a wonderful error message and can boot into the recovery console and choose to repair the system following the steps outlined in the coursebook and simulation. No need for ten Vista Installation CDs!
By the way, it is a great iso file to burn to CD and use as Desktop Support Engineer to troubleshoot users computers.
Following things you will need to do for this:
1) create a copy of one of the lab machines (Vista-CL1-02 is as good as any)
2) capture your favourite PE, RE or Vista Insall ISO
3) delete a super important system file like the winload.exe
4) make sure to save the changes by merging the disks
Ok, Maybe step 2 is not as easy as it sounds. So here is some help along the way:
Vista PC Guy has a nice article on creating PE images, where he also talks about creating bootable USB versions. http://www.vistapcguy.net/?p=71
But we want a recovery image and not a PE image. More importantly we need the Startup Recovery tools "srt" loaded at startup. This is what you do:
1) Follow PC Guy's teps 1 thru to 8 to create a clean winpe image. Or use the one you extracted out of the 5119 course iso file using WinRar or PowerISO or IsoBuster or whatever ISO app you like.
2) Add the RE tools to the image by using the BuildWinRE tool located in the "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Recovery" folder. Remember to use the WinPE Command Prompt instead of the standard one to have all paths properly loaded. It is as simple as defining the source and destination. In my case (having created the pe folder myself using AIK) it looked like this:
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Recovery>BuildWinRE /source "C:\winpe_86\ISO\sources\boot.wim" /target "C:\winpe_recovery\ISO\sources\boot.wim"
3) final step is to take this RE image and make a bootable ISO file using oscdimg:
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools>oscdimg -lVistaRecovery -b"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\boot\etfsboot.com" -n -h c:\winpe_recovery\iso winrecovery.iso
Important here is to remember to reference the etfsboot.com, otherwise the iso won't start at bootup.
That's all, now you can start up your virtual machine using the recovery console, start the command prompt, and kill c:\windows\system32\winload.exe and then close the machine commiting changes.
The next time your student will start up that machine he/she'll see a wonderful error message and can boot into the recovery console and choose to repair the system following the steps outlined in the coursebook and simulation. No need for ten Vista Installation CDs!
By the way, it is a great iso file to burn to CD and use as Desktop Support Engineer to troubleshoot users computers.
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