Booting WinPE from HDD using Image Job from DS

[Migration User]

As we all know booting WinPE over PXE is slow, however with one or two computers I was getting it loaded in 90 seconds or so. However I work at a school with 6 labs of at least 30 computers each, so it slows down so much that it is like WinPE isn't even loading. My idea was to put an image of the Altiris WinPE boot files on the computer to be imaged and use PXE to boot to the local version of WinPE meaning it will load quicker and start faster. But it doesn’t work! To at least test booting WinPE from local HDD, this is what I've done so far: Created a CD boot iso using boot disk creator in DS, instead of burning the iso I put it on the local HDD of the computer to be imaged. I copied ntldr and NTDETECT.com from win 2003 CD and created a winnt.sif (See Bellow):

[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\Windows\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=boot.iso"
Architecture = "I386"

I then placed the 4 files on the local hdd of the pc to be imaged and rebooted. It comes up with “Loading RAMDisk...” and then comes up with "Inf txtsetup.sif is either corrupt or missing, status 18" However if I burn that iso to CD IT WORKS!! However as you can imagine I don't want to walk around to 180 odd machines and insert a CD. I want to have it fully automated like when I was using DOS (Which I want to get away from because our images at 8gig just take far too long and I'm also getting ready for deployments of vista soon). So I guess I have 2 questions for you experts please. How do you put WinPE on local HDD and boot from it? How do you get DS to deploy image and do this all automatically using the local WinPE? Thank you Josh

[Migration User]

Josh, If you already have WinPE as a bootable enviroment for PXE, then through the DS console, you can load it as an automation partition to the machines. Then when you assign a job that uses WinPE Automation, the job should automatically pull the automation from the installed partition. To install the partition, right click on the machine(or machines) and select advanced, then Install Automation Partition. Select the one you want to use then follow the steps. Hope this helps.

[Migration User]

Nice implementation of Winpe. One thing to note this is for DS up to 6.8 SP1. Starting with 6.9 DS uses WinPE 2.1 and it uses different implementations. Josh, that being said :) read up the help file for WinPE 2.1 the HDD thing is much easier. nelo

[Migration User]

Thanks Nelo for pointing that out. Amazing the differences a .1 version change can do. I'll keep looking into that, I'm assuming what your saying is that its still able to be booted from an iso file just have to find the right way to do it with v2.1. Pikoshi, I had a look at the automation partition idea, however I was under the impression that it will always boot first while restarting the computer? So i thought the boot order would be PXE, Automation, HDD, even if there wasn't a job to image the computer in DS? Does the automation partition stay unused unless called by PXE? Its all getting quite complicated for me, however I feel I'm learning so much about DS and how PXE and booting works now. At this point I'm still scared to learn the next step of doing image installs of Vista!! :S Thanks for your reply's guys, it would really be a great thing to have our image process take 2 hours instead of 5 or so... Josh

[Migration User]

Josh, The Automation partition stays hidden and unused until called from the DS via a job. All you have to do is set the job to run in the WinPE automation and it will look to see if an automation partition is installed on the machine then boot to it instead of PXE.

[Migration User]

Thanks Pikoshi, I'll give that a go, and hopefully we'll see a huge speed increase in our image deployment!