No more WinPE

That looks good John.

I did warn you pe building is addictive.

You might want to try a different explorer - the macrium one is ok - however there are much better alternatives.

I use windows explorer in my builds - that might be going a bit far for some people - you could look at explorer++ and see if you like it.

http://www.explorerplusplus.com/

 

@Paragon MA,

Many thanks for the info.

 

Thanks. I tried the WinPE disk on a Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit system, and it worked very well.

The one thing I did notice is that on the 64 bit system -- even though it has nothing to do with whether it's 32 bit or 64 bit -- the drive letters got all mixed up. That's because that laptop has 2 un-named proprietary Toshiba hidden partitions. On my 32 bit laptop, I deleted everything (the "C" drive and all the hidden proprietary Lenovo partitions) and started from scratch with a Win 7 Pro 32 bit disk. I then had to d/l all the necessary drivers and install them. Those drives are all ordered properly using the WinPE HDM 11 disk. On the other laptop, the hidden "system" partition, and another hidden proprietary rescue partition ended up changing the letter assignments all around. I learned a long time ago to NAME each drive/partition (i.e. C is named DriveC, D is named DriveD, etc.) so when I am working with a program that tends to change the letters around, I can at least recognize which drive/partition is which. The scary thing, at first, was when it came to that page in HDM 11 that asks which drive letter should be assigned to the restored partition. I panicked. (In this case, it was "E" for the "C" drive. "C" was not available to choose from.) But since Windows re-assigns all boot drives with "C" anyway, (and since I'm not using a multi-boot system, although I've read that that shouldn't cause a problem either) the proper drive letters were there when I rebooted after a test restore. Now I'm confident that everything will be okay; at first, I was apprehensive, because it all looked totally different than when I did a restore on the laptop with no hidden partitions. So that's why I included my experience in this post -- for other users who might be confused or apprehensive about the changing around of all the letters on a system that has hidden/un-named drives.

 

I know that it is possible to customize WinPEs, but I am not particularly interested in doing this regularly, and I think it should be necessary only in special cases.

My point is that the “free” Boot Media Builder should build a WinPE with some basic options included that are lacking in the current versions of Paragon WinPEs:

- A drop list so select the keyboard layout.
- Possibility to change the screen resolution.
- Possibility to add 64-bit drivers.
- It should include drivers for USB 3.0.
- Possibility to change the time zone (if it is possible).

 

Yes, you did, but this addiction is a positive one; my brain cells need exercise. A WinPE project does not need several days/weeks to complete. It is only fun..

I am so old that I started my personal computing with CP/M and DOS computers. I loved Norton Commander as a graphical user interface, easy to navigate, start DOS applications and so on. I bought NC to all my employees; the app prog made computing easy and effective. After Symantec acquired Peter Norton's company, they, after some years, dumped NC. Total Commander is a similar product, but have 10x the features of NC. So, TC is more than capable to be my 'Explorer' in my WinPE environment.

I am sorry for my screen shot in post #74; I did not show HDM12, which is the main program in my WinPE environment. Let me compensate for my slip; Open.cmd gives this simple menu (hopefully it might give other users an idea about 'personalizing'):

 

@ Robin,

Keyboard layout and time zone are just reg entries .

Screen res can be set with an unattend.xml file.

USB 3.0 Drivers do not belong to Paragon - they are made by renesas and keep getting updated.

There is debate about what is the best place to get the latest ones from - station drivers seems pretty good - I don't know how you expect Paragon to do that for you.

In any case, Paragon apps are 32 bit coded - they will use x86 winpe.wim.

You don't need 64 bit drivers in winpe even if you have 64 o/s.

32 bit drivers are needed for 32 bit pe - doesn't matter what bit version o/s you have on your HD.

I am sure they will include an option to add drivers - but you will need to point at a folder of drivers you have already downloaded.

 

Before we had limitations from Microsoft license agreement. But with BMB I think we will make it more flexible. First release of this tool sure will not have all sweet options but next releases should.
As for USB3.0 driver I would say, that user has to inject it himself (we will give a way to select storage drivers). Microsoft could not buy Renesas driver (or did they ever try?) so standard Windows package does not have it. And Paragon can do nothing with it as well.

 

Thanks for the info Paragon MA.

BMB link is on my downloads page now.

It doesn't go anywhere - perhaps it will be working tomorrow.

 

The download is already working.

 

Does anyone know if the new setup allows you to make a personalized disk with customized HDM 11 settings (i.e. like compression setting, time zone setting, etc) locked in, as opposed to the default settings?

 

It is not working for me.

Clicking the link goes straight back to the My downloads page.

 

OK - now at last I am ble to get the links sent by email.

Cripes it's big.

Why isn't it just a small app that uses the files off your hard drive ?

Can't see the point of including the actual HDM program as well.

 

I would have expected a small app but maybe they've fudged the HDM internals to make it easier to build or included bug fixes or ...? Is the version build of HDM the same as the previously downloaded one?

Is this available for HDM 11 or just 12? I don't see anything obvious for 11.

 

By the time you all load WAIK as well, it should make a lot of internet service providers happy next month.

Think I'll stick with my Winbuilder project script.

 

I used BMB to create a WinPE with HDM 12 Suite. I added drivers for USB 3.0. I used a non-English WAIK that I had downloaded several months ago (1.3 GB). The process was simple and fast, no problem. My first impression of the BMB is very positive.

The WinPE booted normally, the interface is exactly the same as that of the pre-built WinPE. But it did´t recognized an external USB disk connected to an USB 3.0 port. Perhaps I did something wrong when I added the drivers, I will try again later.

 

It is the same as the winpe cd you used to download.

There is the option to browse to drivers - as expected.

Probably the easiest way to make some small customizations is to change the explauncher.ini, before you run the BMB.

Something like this is very simple to do:

 

I repeated the process with the same result. While building the WinPE with BMB, I noticed that the inclusion of the USB 3.0 drivers was not confirmed at any point.

This time I added manually the USB 3.0 drivers working from the WinPE created with BMB, and the external disk was recognized. This shows that the drivers hadn´t been added during the build process.

So, I think that the "add drivers" function of this version of BMB is not working properly. Otherwise, the program worked well for me.

 

I didn't try that - does BMB ask for a folder of drivers - or do you point each .inf in turn?

 

I don't think I have any 11 series in my account , the only d/l for bmb atm is 12 series as far as I can tell.

 

I pointed to each .inf in turn, following the instructions on the screen. The drivers were correctly identified but apparently not added (or "injected").

 

CONFIRMED!

Like Robin, I have tried twice. My motherboard does not support USB 3.0, I have a PCIe card and HAVE to add the Renesas drivers. The only way is to do as Robin did: Add drivers manually.

I am disappointed.

Edit: As before, you can add the needed drivers AFTER you have performed the WinPE boot (Tools), but the purpose of the customized WinPE environment, is to have the necessary drivers loaded by default.

 

No link as yet on my "My Downloads" page, even though I have Backup & Recovery 11 Home

 

This is the first BMB - you can't expect it to be perfect.

It is like HDM12 users are getting the beta of it.

There does seem to be a problem- some drivers are not being recognised.

You can borrow the little thing what I wrote to do it :

DISMGUIx86x64.zip.txt

 

They've added it to Backup and Recovery 2011 Home.

bob

 

Indeed they have (thanks for the heads-up).