After Microsoft shutting down the WnPE project a few months ago, the project comes back with the PE Builder v3, which helps you create your own bootable Windows XP CD. Handy if you are an admin.
Bootable Windows XP CDs are Back
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..and still there
for reasons Bart states, I couldn’t get hold of WinPE … but that’s okay cos KNOPPIX rocks and is probably more versatile anyway. I’ve used KNOPPIX on workstations to 2-way Xeon IBM xSeries servers with no problem to do such things as diagnostics and copy off files to the network.
but Bart’s PEBuilder will no doubt become a must-have utility disk, like KNOPPIX or Hiren’s Boot Disk … or Bart’s own bootdisk.
So i can use that file burnt to cd-rom to at very least extract files from a PC that has crashed and send them to my cdrw or second hardrive? Is that correct? If true then i really wish i had this two weeks ago.
there’s actually a warez release of windows pe that contains all the goodies. Url is http://members.rogers.com/khauyeung/SUPERWINPE.HTM
Check it out
Its a great product. Note however that you can’t download it from the site, gotta find it elsewhere.
or just use Knoppix or Morphix or….
but can you use it without worrying about it wiping out your master boot record?
I messed up the XP boot sequence today on my dual boot PC and a quick reboot into Linux and a Google search found this handy site: http://www.qvctc.commnet.edu/classes/csc277/boot-xp.html
Half-way down, it explains that you can use F8 to get a menu and then choose the “Last Known Good Configuration” – amazingly, this is neither documented with the (rubbish) booklet I got with the PC nor is it shown on the XP boot screen either ! It saved my bacon though and XP now boots OK again…
I bet that a fair number of XP boot problems can be fixed by this, rather than having to dig out a rescue CD…I’m just annoyed that I didn’t know about F8 until today !
FYI, F5 will put you straight into Safemode without having to hit that F8 menu screen.
The F8 trick is probably “undocumented” in XP because getting boot options by doing that has been a feature since Windows 95. I’d imagine that most people using XP have to use that trick far less often than they used to.
By reading the following I thought you meant that MS shut it down and then decided to start it up again. But this isn’t an official MS WinPE.
After Microsoft shutting down the WnPE project a few months ago, the project comes back with the PE Builder v3, which helps you create your own bootable Windows XP CD. Handy if you are an admin.
The WinPE disk is good because linux doesn’t have safe support for NTFS partitions. It’s coming in kernel 2.6, but right now I wouldn’t trust sensitive data to knoppix. Plus, it’s just neat. I’ve used it already and it’s cool.
i mean erd commander has all that allready, you can boot off a cd, backup your data, change the registy or even the admin password.
So why is this better for rescuing a crashed (non-bootable) pc
Well, it’s free plus you can customize it to include your favorite 32bit Windows utilities.
Most people can’t afford to buy the ERD Commander.
So why is this better for rescuing a crashed (non-bootable) pc
Because ERD Commander depends on the settings of your running/crashed windows installation.
WinPE instead is a fully Win32 environment, and Bart’s implementation do all the auto-networking (ala kudzu) and don’t rely on your actual configuration.
A very useful tool I must add, Morphix & PE Builder are two things I’ll keep in my tool box.
… build this on a friends computer (I don’t use Windows myself) and then use the disk on other peoples computers. I ask this because I’m often asked to fix friend’s and family’s computers. Would this be a license violation? I’ll respect the limitations MS imposes on their software, I just won’t use MS products on my computers. I’m only asking because of the inability to write to NTFS from Linux (which has ruled out Knoppix in the past). Thanks.
The main advantage of PEBuilder or PE itself is for the 32-bit drivers that are included on the cd (derived, I think, from the installed os on the machine on which you build the iso).
This makes life simpler for system builders and corporate admins building and deploying imaged systems. For me, it gives me the ability to image to and from directly-connected firewire disks on the Toshiba’s we deploy to customer networks. No more real-mode networking drivers or stacks, and no more swapping boot floppies. (And about bloody time, too.)
We got all the same advantages from getting our imaging system working under Knoppix, but the MS syntax is more familiar for most of our techs. Knoppix works great, though, for the techs that use it. (The images are slightly larger, for some reason.)
By the way, we’ve used both WinPE and the earlier PEBuilder, and they were _extremely_ comparable in functionality. I’m quite curious how things might be different in the newer version. (What was all the stink about?) Generally, we prefer PEBuilder because it adjusts resolutions on boot, and that makes things just that much easier.
Joe
The F8 menu has been around since Windows 95. You can’t seriously tell me that it’s taken 8 years for people to discover this function?
And I’m sure it’s in the manual somewhere too, but lets face it noone ever reads it so Microsoft could write whatever they want in there…