VistaPE

I use a VistaPE disk with Mustang's ATI 11 and ADD 10 plugins. It works fine on the computer it was prepared on, and works OK on my other computer except that networking does not work.

Might this be because the VistaPE disk needs to be made on the system it is to be used on?

 

The VistaPE CD is not dependent on the computer on which it was created. You may just need to add drivers for the NIC.

 

I think I know the reason for this, but not the solution. The old PC has a NIC integrated in the mobo, but it never could be persuaded to work so I added a standard PCI NIC and disabled the integrated one via Device Manager in XP.

It could be that VistaPE is detecting and trying to use the integrated NIC, and I have no idea how I can configure it not to do that as hardware detection and setup is an automatic process.

My current build of VistaPE seems hardly to need to examine the hardware, whereas the first version I had spent quite a while examining it, but in that version network config did work on the old PC. Now it fails.

 

Thinking further about this, my both my current and previous versions of VistaPE were built with Winbuilder and the same Mustang ATI 11 script, yet the former detected and correctly set up the NIC in the old PC and the second does not. I did not change the default driver set in either build, all I did was add DD 10.

I used Winbuilder 074 for the latest build, but do not know what version was used for the original build, which was probably about six months ago.

Is the previous version of Winbuilder available anywhere so that I can try again?

OK - found it.

 

Have you read Mustang’s latest free guide where he talks about adding a script and additional drivers?

 

Yes Bruce I have. I've a strong hunch now though that the problem has arisen from using a later version of Winbuilder. I'm going to do the build again using version 070, and have $50 on it working correctly.

 

Well, I wish you the best in solving this. You might want to try WinBuilder v.072 which is really 072a.

Bruce

 

Earthling:

If you have the motherboard NIC disabled in the BIOS then I doubt that VistaPE is trying to configure it.

Are you sure that networking is not working? The behavior of later builds of VistaPE 11 differs from earlier builds. In the earlier builds, everything waited for drivers to load and the network to be configured before the desktop appeared. This process could take 1-2 minutes, but you were aware that it was going on in the foreground.

In later builds of VistaPE 11, these processes take place in the background and the desktop appears much sooner. It still takes 1-2 minutes for the network to be configured, but you see the desktop well before the network is available. A popup box later informs you that the network is up. Have you waited this out to see if it occurs?

Finally, if none of this works there is another way to add network drivers without modifying your VistaPE build. Create a folder on the machine where networking is not working. Find the driver files for the NIC and put them in this folder. Name the folder "Drivers" and put it at the root of the C: drive (C:\Drivers). When VistaPE boots it looks for this folder and, if found, configures the network adapter using the driver files in the folder.

 

kOlo:

You have described what I see during the boot process exactly. However if I then run PENetCfg from the menu there is a long wait before it tells you it is unable to start network support. However if I boot using my original VistaPE disc, dated 1 Jan 08, the network does come up using PENetCfg. I no longer have the Winbuilder files for that build so don't know which version of VistaPE was used, though in both old and new builds I used the same Mustang script.

The onboard NIC is indeed disabled in the BIOS (not in Device Manager as I said earlier - sorry), but the problem I face in adding drivers for the PCI NIC is that I don't have any. There is a floppy for the PCI NIC with Win9X drivers on it, but the Readme file tells you that the required drivers for XP are automatically provided by XP. So the latest build of VistaPE seems to have omitted some stuff - including my NIC's drivers!

 

One of the problems with VistaPE is that it does not create support for all the hardware supported in a Vista DVD. That's why I provided a VistaPE script to add drivers. If you can't get a Vista driver for your PCI NIC, I recommend you replace it with modern NIC that does supply a Vista certified driver. These cards are cheap and it doesn't make any sense to spend much time trying to get an older card to work.

 

With a bit more googling I did finally manage to find an XP driver for the old NIC, put it in C:\Drivers and bingo, network up. ATI 11 and DD10 available from menu. Just need now to put it all in a bootable partition on 2nd IDE drive.

Many thanks for getting me out of the mire once again

 

I've created an Active Primary partition on the 2nd internal IDE of my old XP system and copied the contents of my VistaPE CD to it. I get ...

GRUB loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait ...

Error 17

Is there something else I should also be doing, perhaps the equivalent of bootsect.exe /nt60 in Vista?

 

Earthling:

Just to eliminate confusion, can you try booting that PC with only the 2nd internal IDE disk attached and no CDs in the drive tray?

Unless you installed GRUB to this disk, you should not be seeing GRUB at all. Before diving into fixing this, I just want to be sure that this isn't being caused by an installation of GRUB on another disk.

 

The 2nd IDE used to have Mandriva on it, which probably explains it. Would the simplest thing to do be to reformat the entire disk and repartition it? That would not be any problem at all.

 

That would do it. A "fixmbr" operation with a Windows XP CD (make sure you direct the program to fix the correct disk) may also work.

To answer another question, if you want to boot VistaPE directly from your newly-added primary active partition then yes, you will also need to write a Vista bootsector to the partition (bootsect.exe /nt60 X, where X: is the drive letter of the partition as seen in the WinRE environment (booted from a Vista DVD).

 

Mark:

Got rid of the Grub error on the old XP PC by using DD to clear and overwrite the partition. I then went through the same process we went through on the Vista machine to get VistaPE to boot from an active primary partition on the second IDE (a process I'm pretty au fait with now, so I know it's ok), but it won't boot. Gets as far as finding the boot record - OK, but goes no further.

The PC is a bog standard twin internal IDE machine and the CD version of VistaPE works just fine, except it is painfully slow to boot. Hence my wish to boot it from an internal drive.

 

Earthling:

Please describe what you see when the PC attempts to boot VistaPE from the hard disk. Are there any error messages?

Is your VistaPE partition on the primary IDE hard disk (BIOS device 80h) or on the secondary hard disk (BIOS device 81h)?

 

There are no error messages, simply Searching for Boot Record from IDE-1..OK

The VistaPE partition is the first partition on what BIOS calls Primary IDE Slave, the Primary IDE Master (IDE-0) being the system drive. The secondary IDE bus hosts the two optical drives.

 

Earthling:

It would be interesting to see what would happen if the current IDE-0 drive was disconnected and the drive with the VistaPE partition was connected in its place.

 

I'll try it and let you know. Could be a day or two though.

 

Finally found a bit of time to try this, but to my surprise the response was the same - Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..OK and no further.

Rather than set IDE drives as Master or Slave I always leave drives on Cable Select and just connect the cable according to which I want. It seems to work perfectly, but could it possibly be a factor in this failure to boot?

 

Earthling:

That message is from your computer's BIOS. It seems to indicate that it finds a bootable partition on the drive but then nothing happens.

Using Disk Director, select the partition that contains VistaPE and choose "Edit" and then "View" then "As Hex". When looking at the first sector in the partition, examine the rightmost column near the bottom. What do the text error messages say? They should refer to "Bootmgr" (bootmgr is missing; bootmgr is compressed, ...). If so, it indicates a Vista-bootable partition boot record. If, however, the messages refer to "ntldr", (ntldr is missing; ntldr is compressed, ...) then the boot record is Windows XP-bootable, and that's the problem. You would need to repeat the bootsector command (bootsect.exe /nt60 X, where X: is the drive letter of the partition as seen in the WinRE environment (booted from a Vista DVD).

And while viewing in Disk Director, confirm that the partition is a primary, NTFS partition with a red (bootable) flag visible on the partition's icon.

 

It's all as it should be - BOOTMGR is missing..Disk error..Press any key to restart..

The partition is Primary, Active, and has a red flag on its icon. The only difference is that I used FAT32 rather than NTFS.

 

Earthling:

That's curious. It all sounds correct, and VistaPE should boot from FAT32 partitions, but maybe there is some incompatibility in your PC's BIOS. Recall that if you load VistaPE to a USB flash drive that some PCs will do fine with FAT32 where others will only boot from FAT16. That shouldn't be an issue with an IDE hard disk but you never know.

About all I can think of trying is to reformat your partition from FAT32 to NTFS, repeat the bootsect command to make it bootable, recopy your files from the CD and try again.

 

So as to leave no stone unturned I will try that. At the end of the day though it's no more than an inconvenience, as it boots VistaPE fine from a CD, it just takes rather a long time to do so.