Bart Lagerweij has created an easy way for users to create his/her own version of Microsoft’s Windows Preinstallation Environment with his new PE Builder. Windows will then run off the CD-rom, without a needed hard drive installation.
DIY, Windows Preinstallation Environment CD “WinPE”
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I am a liitle confused… is there a GUI or jsut a command prompt?
3 thumbs up. This opens the doors for a host of applications where users don’t have to have fat agreements set up with M$. Such as taking XP and creating on-a-budget bootable appliances, or small-factor flashdisk boot systems. Ofcourse this may not be PE builder’s intent, but it certainly is a very interesting application area.
Yes, is has an 800×600 GUI.
I guess this would be useful for people who know how to repair things with the command line.
The only tools I use are things like diskpart, fixmbr, and just a few other things that pertain to fix the HDD before installing windows, or fixing the MBR when Mandrake 9.1 overwrites the MBR even though I specified that it shouldn’t.
I realise that person put a lot of effort in creating a 98.03% WinPE a-like clone. But why wouldn’t I just use the windows CD to get to a WinXP dos prompt? I guess I wouldn’t have networking capabilities.
This would be great for a recovery disk, the console mode recovery with 2K is too limited.
How legal is this anyway? Bart mentions a hack to get 24hour uptime, but avoids it because it involves making alterations to a Windows file, so I assume he is trying to stay the right side of the Law.
John Blink: You might want to note that PE Builder requires the Cygwin dll from Red Hat.
I get modded down if I bitch, so..
I’d just like to say I’m so happy they released something like this. I remember back when I used to work on Windows systems. They were a pain in the ass.
I had to boot off of a rescue disk more times than I can count. I would have given anything to have tools like this. You MS techs are so lucky.
I just have one question: Does it have an activation key?
Why didn’t that guy make this WinXP Home-compaitable?
[sigh]
So is this like winternals ERD commander ?
Well it’s bound to kick ass, if it is anywhere near the quality of his bootdisk ! (it’s really great and i like it even better since I got it to boot of my usb-key)
Have anyone tried it yet? If it’s fast, I would love to add very few games on this CD and boot into WindowsCD only for play game. Because, I don’t nor want to install Windows on HD, which I haven’t install it on my HD for over two years.
I would think that with Microsoft’s restrictive licensing a move like this might be illegal? Not trying to rain down on anyones parade, it’s an interesting idea/project, particularly for an OS which lots of people would probably enjoy such an option so they don’t need to actually install it. But doesn’t this kinda cross the bounds and ideas that you license windows to be installed on a single computer? With this it’s certainly never truly installed but it could be run on any computer around really… does this violate anything in the EULA? Hoping the guy who came up with and is now talking about the idea doesn’t get into any trouble.
I would guess that actually making the cd breaks the EULA.
Distributing the cd to others would certainly be a breach of copyright.
But I doubt the actual tool this guy has made is in anyway illegal, or breaching copyright (Not that this would stop MS doing some kind of cease and decist under the DMCA, if the guy doesn’t want to fight it).
Its a shame I use 2k instead of XP, because the recovery console is severly crippled, and I’ve never found it very helpful when windows gets aggrivated about the partitions changing.
By Cheezewog…
>John Blink: You might want to note that PE Builder requires >the Cygwin dll from Red Hat.
I understand why he used Mkisofs.exe, but why use cygwin.dll?, and what importants does cygwin.dll have to my earlier post.
@technodev
Microsoft has put in a 24h uptime limit to stop people from using it as a “os”. I know how to get around that but pe builder does not change that.
I do wurry about the some line in the OPK doc that says that winpe is *licensed* to Oem’s and enterprice/select customers only. This means the rest of the world does not have a license to use WinPE…
Bart.
I downloaded the thing to play with it. I’m not worried about the licensing since we’ve got XP Pro and PE licensing for our deployment engineering anyway. This isn’t an ISO. This thing isn’t PE, it’s just a tool for stripping out a version of XP Pro that works mostly the same as PE. If you have a license for XP Pro for each machine you’re going to use this on, this looks okay, as a guess. IANAL. We use PE with our imaging tools to get 32-bit speeds (4x faster than dos) and to solve scripting and driver-compatibility problems. From a quick test, this looks like it’ll work for most people just fine, at least for what we’re using it for, very similarly to PE. No GUI, just a vga-mode command prompt, like when you reboot after running convert on a system volume. YMMV. –Joe
Yes…. But how do I setup a netwrok from the command line?
Check the front page of his site, microsoft asked him to take it down it’s gone. :*(
http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=635&s=1919b645a2… that’s how you remove 24 hour time limit and I can’t find any other place to download it so if someone has a link to 1.06 that would be nice.
Avast are using this for an antivirus boot disk. http://www.avast.com
Cheers,
m
They took down the files, anyone got a mirror?
John, the post I was responding to was moderated down after I replied. I was savouring the irony of the need for a Linux environment in the light of your comments.
I think he needed cygwin to compile mkisofs from the cdrtools source. The finished PE Builder probably does not need it, but has been pulled from the site so I cannot check.
It’s been taken down: “Microsoft us (nicely)”.
🙁
Try searching emule for WinPE Builder or something.
Just found this…
http://public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/nu2files/pebldr106.zip
Avast DID not use Bart’s tools!!!!!!!!!!!!
ausome stayed up till 5am seing what apps would run with it for instance i edited my iso image to include ontracks
fix it utils
and easy recov pro
sisoft sandra
etc and they worked key is programs that are not registry dependent
easy way to find out
install a program share the drive and try to fire the app from a shared drive if it works it will work on the cdrom
also handy to include are
mbrtool
mbr work
wipe
cygwin
those all are free ware the above listed (sisoft etc)
are comercial ive purchased
also partition magic 8 (half the utils worked)
theres a whole bunch of stuff on my cdrom now and im concidering mastering a bootable dvd for systems that have a dvd drive
note if the app is on the hosts hd you can often fire it from the command line as well
this thing is almost as ausome as knoppix with time it might even compete with knoppix
to remaster try buying ultra iso
if you use the demo version you will be restricted to iso images of 300mb
I could really use a working link if someone has one
the limit resides in a winlogon .exe search for the milliseconds of a day…
PE is becoming knoppix?
try edonkey for links just use peb and it is a small file there is all three versions out there
“the limit resides in a winlogon .exe search for the milliseconds of a day…
PE is becoming knoppix?”
Err, there are 86330935.25179857 milliseconds in a day. What good does that do?
It seems I’ve searched the world over.. alas, I believe that the file is no longer available anywhere. E-Donkey, E-mule, Kazaa etc.. cannot locate any of the files. If someone has the latest.. please let us know!!
Is anyone out there still have a copy of PE builder? Please send me a copy. I am at [email protected]
Thank you very much.
LuKhach