Question for Mustang about VistaPE w/ATI-11 Plugin

After building a successful VistaPE boot disk with your ATI-11 plugin I added an eSATA adapter card to my system. Now I would like to build a new boot disk incorporating the Vista drivers for this card since my tests with copying/moving files in Vista to the eSATA drive enclosure show it to be about twice as fast as USB 2.

I have read the exchanges with NightMan for doing this here:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3660

But I wonder if you can point me to a clearer set of instructions for adding specific drivers to the WinBuilder process. The version of WinBuilder I have at present is 074 (15 December 07).

Many thanks!

 

Most hardware has built in driver support under Vista. If your eSata card is not supported, you may be in trouble. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to add drivers at this time. I'm hoping someone will work this out in the future.

BartPE may be a better way for you to go. Drivers can easily be adde under BartPE.

 

atitlan and Mustang:

I have two suggestions to consider.

1. Vista includes support for 34,000 drivers and devices. Vista SP1, which is just now rolling out, will include support for 78,000. So your device may be supported in SP1. VistaPE version 12, which is now in development, will support Vista SP1.

2. A little-known feature of VistaPE 11 is that you can create a folder named "Drivers" in the root of any partition on the target PC (for example, on your machine with the eSATA adapter card) and include the drivers in this folder. When VistaPE boots it will look for this folder, and if found, use the drivers contained in the folder. I've confirmed that this works with network adapter drivers, but am unsure how this will work if your only disk (with the Drivers folder) can't be accessed at VistPE boot time.

 

Do you know if this works if the Drivers folder is located on a flashdrive or USB hard drive that's connected when VistaPE is booted?

 

Paul:

I haven't tested that, so I don't know.

 

Well guess what, it works! I was curious after replying last time so I did a test. On my laptop, I renamed the "Drivers" folder on the hard disk so that VistaPE would not find it. Then I copied the driver for the laptop's wireless adapter to a folder named "Drivers" and put it on the USB flash drive along with the rest of the VistaPE files.

During the initial loading phase (vpeldr) I could see that the Drivers folder was not detected on the laptop's hard disk (as expected) and was detected on the USB flash drive, and I could see that the driver for the WLAN was found and loaded. After VistaPE finished booting and after the PENetCfg process had completed, the wireless LAN was enabled. So it does appear to work.

While I haven't tested this for a disk controller driver, I suspect that it would also work.

 

Gentlemen: Mustang, K0lo, and MudCrab — thank you all for responding to my question.

I have followed all your recommendations and all comes to naught.

1. VistaPE does not recognize or load the drivers for the eSATA card when they are located in the folder 'Drivers' on the root of my system's boot [target] drive.

I did not build a new version of VistaPE using WinBuilder 074 for this test; instead I used my existing disk which was built with 072.

I don't know whether this could account for the failure.

2. I used the new UBCD4Win v3.11a to build a BartPE disk with the same drivers VistaPE did not load and it worked — the eSATA drive enclosure was visible to all the file managers and to ATI-11.

Unfortunately, none of the AHCI-mode SATA drives on my Gigabyte P35 DS3L board were recognized, so the effort was useless.

Then I downloaded the Feb. 11 Driver Pack, which does support the Intel ICH9 chipset, and joined just this driver with the Silicon Image one for the eSATA card in separate subfolders of the SCSIAdapter folder, while disabling the MassStorage plugin. In theory, this should have produced a disk precisely tailored to the hard drives of my system.

Still no dice: the eSATA driver was recognized, but none of the SATA drivers.

So I will suspend this project until Vista SP1 starts a new round of boot disk building. Until then it's USB 2 or Firewire for my IcyDocks.

Again, thanks for you help.

 

You say "VistaPE does recognize or load...". I assume you mean "does not" since you imply that it didn't work.

Does you WinBuilder 072 setup use VistaPE 10 or VistaPE 11? If it uses version 10, that might cause a problem if the "Drivers" feature was added in version 11.

You can keep you existing 072 setup and install 074/11 into a different folder (like "Winbuilder 074-11). That way you can see if it would make a difference without messing up your 072 setup.

 

You're half way there. You got the eSATA card to work in UBCD4Win. Under UBCD4Win you will also need to add the WinXP drivers for the AHCI-mode SATA. This was not necessary under VistaPE because there was native support. UBCD4Win uses BartPE that does not have native support for AHCI-mode SATA.

 

MudCrab -

1) Typo, typo … ! Indeed, NOT was meant and is now edited. My version of VistaPE can't be 11, since NightMan's download page dates it as 1st of January. And I doubt I even have version 10 on my boot disk, as I built it within days of Mustang's announcement of his script and instructions for WinBuilder and I think that was late November or early December.

So, I am thinking it's time to do a new VistaPE and try the 'Drivers' folder move again.

Mustang -

2) The Feb 11 release of DriverPack has the Intel ICH9 drivers and I placed them in the appropriate subfolder for a UBCD4Win build. I was surprised when my SATA drives failed to appear. Oh, well …

Definitely will try a new VistaPE 11. The things to which we are driven by the need for speed …

I greatly appreciate the time and thought you both have given, and not just in this instance.