www.nu2.nu/pebuilder -> www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Bart's PE Builder helps you build a "BartPE" (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks. It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on. PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment ("WinPE"). Using PE Builder does not grant you a license to Microsoft WinPE or to use the Windows XP or Server 2003 binaries in a manner other than stated in the End-User License Agreement include in your version of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has not reviewed or tested PE Builder and does not endorse its use. Please do not contact Microsoft for support on the preinstallation environment that has been created by PE Builder! Microsoft does not provide support for PE Builder or for the preinstallation environment created by PE Builder. To avoid any confusion, the bootable media's generated by PE Builder should be called by it's nickname "BartPE"!
sys and lots of other tools needed to boot a PC the way I want it to. As you can read above I've stopped doing that in 2002 (last year). I saw a Windows PE (WinPE) bootable CD-Rom (from Microsoft) in action and I got very, very curious. I knew then as I know now, that in time PE-based solutions will be every PC technicians best friend. Goodbye to all the good and bad dos-based NTFS utilities! Now we can boot from a CD-Rom and have full read/write access to NTFS volumes! Here are a few things that are possible with PE and are not possible with any type of dos-based boot disk, even when using network support and ntfsdos: * Accessing very large (>2TB) NTFS volumes or accessing volumes that are not seen by the BIOS, like some fibre channel disks. If you do not meet one or more of the requirements listed above, you may not install or use this SOFTWARE PRODUCT and you must terminate the installation of this SOFTWARE PRODUCT immediately"... But then I started thinking, how difficult can it be to build something simular to Windows PE from a Windows XP installation CD-Rom? A quick file compare looked like most of the needed files are on the Windows XP CD-Rom. Only because I thought building this was easy, I started coding my own builder program. Had I knew how hard it would be, I would probably never start programming PE Builder. Yes, version 1 was a very simple, very static, very bad and copyright violating program. And the (very friendly) people at Microsoft had every right to kick my butt. But I learned from it and in May 2003 I started on a second version. The version 2 build engine had its own registry hive builder which was not easy to program and took about 50% of my research and coding time. It also was dynamic enough that it could build from windows XP and Server 2003. Some non-English versions of Windows XP had filenames longer than the maximum allowed length for Joliet filenames (103 chars). exe) so that the Windows NT bootstrap and setup loader would boot properly. The file and directory names can now be up to 207 characters. When comparing some INF files they looked too much like the WinPE builder from Microsoft. I had to change the entire INF file layout to use its own format. And on Sep 1, 2003 (almost 6 months after starting) version 3 was ready. After adding plugin support, PE Builder got very popular. People from all over the world are writing their own plugins to add the program they like and use. What is the difference between BartPE and Microsofts WinPE? Bart sees Windows PE as the next generation rescue platform.
Microsoft's builder does not give you a start-menu, it uses a command prompt. The end user can even combine plugins from different software vendors into one CD image. The TCP/IP settings like: dynamic/static ip-address, subnet-mask, default gateway, dns-servers computer-name, workgroup can be changed on-the-fly. You can create pre-defined profiles, that you can select. Also there is a plugin (NwDskPe) created by Erwin Veermans that loads the Netware Client on BartPE (IP/IPX). Requirements to build: 1 The files from your Windows Installation CD-Rom. Supported Windows versions are: + Windows XP Home Edition (must be slip streamed with Service Pack 1 or higher) + Windows XP Professional (must be slip streamed with Service Pack 1 or higher) + Windows Server 2003, Web Edition + Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition + Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition 2 PE Builder runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003 systems. Microsoft only provides Windows PE to OEM and Enterprise customers. So the small companies and end users do not get Windows PE. With PE Builder they can build a Bootable XP CD-Rom (called BartPE) to use for maintaining their systems.
Technet Webcast about Windows PE a Microsoft Program Manager (not calling any names) says: "BartPE is an unlicensed version of WinPE and of Windows XP. Something to we really encourage people to stay away from because it's actually an improperly licensed version of Windows". This is not correct, BartPE is not WinPE and will never be WinPE. BartPE is not build from any WinPE file and does not use any files that belong to Windows PE! When BartPE is not used in a correct way this can be true (see below). When using BartPE you should know that: 1 It is legal to make a "backup copy" of ANY files from your original Windows XP/2003 media to another media. This means that if you want to have a licensed WinPE, you cannot use BartPE. However, you can use a BartPE image under the license of the Windows XP/2003 EULA that came with the BartPE XP/2003 source media. I feel that, considering the above, Microsoft cannot say that BartPE is illegal. If you don't break the rules of , , and you don't make more than one BartPE CD without having more than one Windows XP/2003 license, you can use it any environment. The PE Builder download archive does not include any plugins that will break any of the rules show above.
Just unpack the files from the PE Builder zipfile to some location you like. Some plugins require that you download the program and put the files in the right location. For example, if you enabled a plugin, without adding the required files, PE Builder will display an error message saying Missing files: file1, file2, ....
button to get more information about what files are needed. Leave the "Create ISO image" option enabled, it will create the ISO image for you! Do not try to generate the ISO image using some other burning application. Most of them cannot create an ISO-9660:1999 (version 2) filesystem and if they can most of them don't boot!
Storage- and network drivers and other utilities You can understand that PE Builder cannot include all storage and network drivers or all tools and utilities out there. If you work for a company (or if you know people) that develop this, please talk to the development team and urge them to add support for "BartPE". For an example how to build a storage driver plugin, see plugin\dsk_cpqcissm in the pebuilder archive file. For an example how to build a network driver plugin, see plugin\nic_b57xp32 in the pebuilder archive file. For an example how to build a program plugin, see plugin\total commander in the pebuilder archive file.
The following plugins are included within the PE Builder archive. This information is also available in PE Builders "plugin" dialog when you hit the "PluginHelp" button.
As you can understand I cannot include everybody's plugin in my PE Builder archive. If you have made a usefull plugin please upload it to your own website and mail me the link. This way the author of the plugin can maintain the plugin himself and people can find it from the list below. Please make sure your plugin does not contain copyrighted material not allowed for distribution.
Frequently asked questions 1 Q: If I use PE Builder, does that mean that I have properly licensed WinPE from Microsoft? A: BartPE) has these limitations: ...
|
http://csua.com/feed/