Same files on disk - Image file twice as big as before - Same compression setting

Sorry for the confusion - I meant the "Drivers (LAN)" script when building VistaPE; the one in Figure 1.4 on this page from MudCrab's guide.

 

One other thought, how are you determining that networking isn't working? Can you ping anything?

My VistaPE build, done from a Vista DVD, contains PENetCfg for specifying networking parameters (workgroup name, DHCP or static IP, Drive Mapping, etc), and in Vista Explorer the "Map Network Drive" tool works. I've also included Firefox and IE7 in the build so that's another way to check network status by just browsing to web sites.

Again, I don't have a build done only with WAIK, so I'm somewhat in the dark here. Somewhere there should be a tool to let you map a network drive or otherwise work with the network.

 

Mark [EDIT: Before you start typing read through all my messages that follow. I think I isolated the problem near the end.]

I have previously done everything as you describe above.

I downloaded that exact zip file and verified it is the same driver file name last night.

As you suggested last night, I also unzipped the file and put it out in a C:\Drivers just before going to bed last night.

I have one CD with the drivers in the build and one without.

I have tried booting with both CDs and nothing works. Every time I boot to VistaPE I have a long wait for the grammatically poor popup that tells me the network is ready. There has never been any network to be seen.

I am at a loss as to what to try next.

 

One thing that I did notice that struck me as strange but may be normal.

When I go into Device Mangler and check Details of the driver and select "inf file" it says oem8.inf instead of the actual .inf that I got with the download last night.

 

O.K. Yes, that is installed. I also installed my drivers using this path in the WinBuilder Add Drivers script.

C:\WinBuilder074\Projects\VistaPE\Drivers\yk60x86_v10.61.2.3\yk60x86.inf

Thanks for all your help on this!

 

The partitions on my other computer do not show up in the file manager or in True Image. I will try pinging the other computer after reading your other message.

 

Everything I have I've described here... The mapping tool is completely empty except for a list of drives I can map to. There is nothing to map, however.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1283840&postcount=47

 

Well, this is good! I can ping both ways. My old computer can ping my new one and my new one can ping my old one.

There is hope!

So, why can't I see the partitions on my old computer from with VistaPE the way I can within Vista AND when I boot to the Acronis boot Disk?

Might it have something to do with this?...

or perhaps that "Error at bartpe -pnp" message that shows up in the SecNet utility under Network?

 

I don't know if this is important but I can ping long before the grammatically poor popup tells me the network is ready. [EDIT: More scientific testing revealed this is not true. I can only ping seconds before the message pops up and it really takes a long time to pop up relative to the rest of the interface displaying.]

Also, I've discovered that I can ping both ways even with the original build that didn't include Add Driver or the "Drivers (LAN)" script or my Yukon drivers.

I also note that when it is booted into VistaPE, my XP "Microsoft Windows Network" can not see the new computer, even though the machine can ping it.

 

You'll have to forgive the author (NightMan); his native language is not English (he's Russian).

This is good; it means that Vista had Yukon drivers all along and you can dispense with the need to include specialized drivers in your build.

So it seems that the issue is determining how to connect to other PCs on the network. I would think that your LiteStep menu item "Map Network Drive" under "Network" is what's needed.

Did a little search and found this thread. Not very encouraging. It would really be to your advantage to find someone with a non-SP1 Vista DVD to borrow and build from. If built that way, a lot of networking features are available, including Remote Desktop, Map Network Drive, PENetCfg, etc.

One final test you could try that would confirm that your adapter is working properly in VistaPE is to try another test build that includes Firefox. If you can browse the web then it will confirm that the network is working fine but you're missing some of the features of Windows networking.

Can someone who has built VistaPE from WAIK jump in here and let us know if you can see other PCs on the Windows network?

 

SIGH! I am growing weary. While waiting for suggestions on how to solve the not seeing the partitions problem I decided to go ahead and get my USB flash drive booting.

I followed the instructions step by step and when I boot I get:
Error: Can not find GRDLR in all devices.

When I ran the Grub Util I got the message successfully installed just like it showed in the screen shot. I have a 4 GB Kingston flash drive.

The other thing that concerns me is that I have to go into the BIOS each time to change which "Hard Drive" it sees as the booting hard drive. Then when I want to boot to Vista I have to go and change it back.

The point of all this time I'm spending is to make this faster. It seems like by the time I go in and change the BIOS I might as well just wait for the CD to boot.

 

I just noticed that Disk Director doesn't even see my flash drive as a drive anymore. It shows up in explorer but not in DD. I know it did earlier because I used DD to format the drive before copying the VistaPE files to it.

 

Wow - you seem to be getting bit by every possible pitfall in this process. I don't blame you for getting weary or frustrated.

Successful flash drive booting is highly dependent on the PC BIOS, and there are so many variations that make this unpredictable. Larger drives (4 GB and up) are especially problematic; many BIOSes want to "see" these as USB-ZIP format. Grub4DOS wants to see USB-HDD format; in other words a drive with a partition table otherwise identical to the way a hard disk is formatted. Some things to try:

1. Try your drive on other PCs to see if it works with them.
2. If you have a smaller flash drive, try that.
3. If you're going to format the flash drive with Disk Director, try running DD in "Safe" mode from the recovery CD. Have the flash drive plugged in while booting DD.
4. Try one of MudCrab's empty flash drive images, which you can restore to your drive with TI to format it in one fell swoop.

There are also some other suggestions in Paul's article, which is found here. You should be able to format, copy GRLDR and menu.lst to the drive, install grub4Dos to the flash drive's MBR and test. If you see the menu come up then you got it.

On your other comment, a lot of the newer motherboards have a special key (usually F11 or F12) that can be pressed while booting to bring up a boot menu. If your motherboard has this it will eliminate the need to drop into the BIOS menu to change boot devices. My Dell motherboard uses F12 for this.

 

Disk Director can't see the Flash Drive on the new computer or the old one.

I only have one.

It locked up in Safe Mode analysing the Flash Drive.

I'll try that the next time I work on this. I have to work tomorrow. Don't feel like I accomplished much for all the work I did this weekend.

I tried both F11 And F12 with no result. I look through my ASUS motherboard manual to see if I can find anything.

 

Well, apparently I just wasn't patient enough. I left it opening up in safe mode over night and when I got up this morning I was able to format it and now it is seen again by Disk Director in Full mode on the the new computer. However, on the old computer Disk Director does not see it.

This problem is minor, however, compared to figuring out why I can ping back and forth but not see the partitions on the old computer in VistaPE.

 

Sorry I haven't been following your thread. Here's some help:

1. As soon as you see the the NIC adapter name show up in VistaPE you know the drivers have worked. You saw that very early and didn't need to worry about adding drivers from that point on.

2. You do need to use a Vista DVD as the source for the build to get networking to function. Using the WAIK as the source will not work.

3. Your SP1 DVD is not compatible with WinBuilder 074 and VistaPE 011. You can try using WinBuilder 075 beta 4 and VistaPE beta 3. Your SP1 DVD will work with this combination. You will get build errors from the TXTAddLine entries in my scripts. They do not work in VistaPE 012. Just ignore the errors and continue. Disk Director should work in VistaPE. To make TI work you need to manually run some files that didn't get run due to the build errors.

From a file manager double click these files in the TI Program Files folder (schedhelp.exe, TimounterMonitor.exe and TrueImageMonitor.exe).

Open a command prompt and enter "net start AcrSch2Svc" and "net start tifsfilter" without the qoutes. You will see messages that these services have been started.

That should make TI run properly. The only problem you will have is that image mounting will not work. This is a problem with VistaPE 012 that may never be solved.

4. You may need to map a network drive to make your network shares show up in VistaPE. Do this with PENetCfg. I never had any luck with the Map Network Drive feature. Mapping one network share on one computer should automatically make all network shares on all computers on the network show up. You will need to change the Workgroup name using PENetCfg if is is not the default name "WORKGROUP".

5. Using a 4 GB flash drive is a problem. Stay with a 2GB or smaller drive. Your Asus motherboard will display "Press F8 for BBS Popup". This will give you a boot menu to select the USB drive without needing to enter the BIOS.

 

First I admit I haven't read the whole thread, just today's posts.

Second, I'm not a Vista user apart from the Vista PE environment.

One thing with Windows XP is, that it will let you ping and return positive results even if the other Pc is not in the same workgroup.

So, assuming that Vista is running the same way, are your workgroups the same and even more importantly have you either mapped your drives or shared them?

Have you tried going to Vista's equivalent of the RUN menu and physically type in the IP address of your other PC? If this works you should get Windows Exploderer open up with at least the name of the other computer, if you have shared a drive or folder, you should also see this as well.

Does RDC allow you access?

I'd try this from your old to your new computer , not sure how commander and X43 work as far as seeing shared drives/folders from within PE.

Apologies if these questions have been asked and responded to before.

Colin

 

Thanks for jumping in, Mustang. I wish that I had realized the above earlier - I could have saved poor florida_guy a lot of trouble.

 

Well, that certainly explains all of my hair pulling. Thanks very much for the valuable information!

I'll need to pick up a new flash drive on the way home today just for this purpose. Is there any one(s) in particular you recommend? The rest of your very helpful message I'll deal with when I get home.

 

I do appreciate all of your help Mark. As painful as it was I did learn a lot, in the process.

 

You're welcome.

Although it will be interesting to try VistaPE 12, it looks like there will still be some issues. If you want to try this, then by all means go ahead, but here's what I would recommend until VistaPE 12 stabilizes:

1. Buy a 1 GB USB flash drive for ten bucks
2. Borrow a non-SP1 Vista DVD from a friend
3. Build VistaPE 11
4. After you get everything working to your satisfaction, install to a bootable external USB hard disk

You'll find the external hard disk to be fast booting, convenient, and a good place to store your image files.

 

So if I can somehow get my hands on a Vista DVD without SP1 on it can I use my license number to make the VistaPE CD?

[EDIT: I see that Mark was answering my question as I was typing it out. Quite impressive. ]

 

I just had the weirdest experience... SOMETHING ACTUALLY WORKED!!

I successfully booted to VistaPE on my new 1GB flash drive.

Thanks to MudCrab for the tip about F8 letting me select my boot device. The bootup screen doesn't tell you about that unless you push TAB first, which is why I hadn't noticed it before.

I still can't boot to my 500GB FreeAgent external USB hard drive, however. I followed the same steps as with the flash drive but it won't boot.

I have reread http://www.purviancecs.com/acronis.htm where it tells me to copy files from my flash drive to my external hard drive but that is talking about Acronis Media Builder not VistaPE so I'm not sure if that applies to my situation.

A friend of mine is mailing me a Vista DVD with no SP1 so I should be set with networking in a few days.

 

I should have been more specific. What happens when I try to boot to my 500GB external drive is that I get an error that grhlb can not be found. I copied it to the root of the drive per the instructions.

I don't know what else to try.

 

The files and folders on the external drive should be the same as those on the flashdrive. For example, if you have a working flashdrive, you could just copy everything from it to the external drive and then install Grub4DOS to the MBR of the external drive and it should be setup.

When the external drive is plugged in, does it show up in the BIOS boot list?

Have you successfully booted anything else from the external drive?