[Solved] Windows7 PE Help

Bowzer

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Sep 1, 2012
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I am building a customized Win7 pe for work, and all is going well on the build, but a minor detail is driving me insane and I was hoping I could get some insight.

::Everything from here down to the most recent update is probably irrelevant now, as I have worked my way into a new stage of the issue that I am having. The most recent update will probably be info enough, but I'll leave the rest of the post in case anyone wants a bit more background on the situation::

I have the .wim file that I've been working on, using DISM to mount and edit the files, and an offline reg editor to make some minor tweaks that I was looking to do. Everything is saving properly to the registry when I commit changes to the .wim file, so it is definitely not that I cannot edit the reg of the pe (as many people claim). My issue comes in where I cannot seem to enable themes or aero (I think both need to be on for what I am trying to do). I do not care if themes can be changed once the pe is loaded, just want to have a customized taskbar corloring with the orb instead of the start button. This isn't a pe that I would be making public (not planning to anyway), just for use by me in my repair shop and I would like it to look fantastic. Right now I am stuck with the "classic" start bar and can only use the classic and hi-contrast themes. I have added the 11 files required for themes to run in a pe environment, customized the computer name to no longer be minint[serial number], and changed the background, but still cannot enable the custom explorer.exe to show properly.
The start button is actually a button that says "Start" instead of the orb, and the taskbar is grey. I would like the orb and a customized color scheme for the taskbar in my bootable environment. Does anyone know how to tweak this? I have been googling for about 2 days with no luck, so if anyone can help me I would much appreciate it. Thanks in advance to anyone with some insight on this.

Update: Apparently I had overlooked one major detail... the themes service wasn't installed. I have added that service to the registry (already had the files in there, just forgot to add the service to the reg) and now it shows in services.msc and is listed as automatic. Still a few bugs though; the service does not automatically start, but it does start when I manually start it, and the other issue is that this has made absolutely no change to my theme options (Still stuck with classic theme)

Another Update: I can now get the basic theme to load, but I have to start the Themes service manually and then restart explorer.exe. Could anyone have any suggestions as to what may stop the themes service from starting automatically?
 

Bowzer

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Sep 1, 2012
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I appreciate your response, but TechNet will not help me on this. The modifications that I am performing are deemed as "not configurable" in a PE. I know that this is not the case as I have found ways to force it to function, just not in the manner that I would like (yet). I have made some progress, but still not where I need it to be. I was up until 5:30 in the morning tweaking and rebooting, testing, and re-tweaking... so some progress has been made in a good direction. Now I have found that the userinit values of the winlogon key load before the shell application is launched, so I have added my script to the userinit line and am now experiencing some random driver failures on boot so I am now looking into the ram space that I am using up. I may need to remove some other files to free up some space (I am almost at a 1.5gb .wim file) on a machine with 3gb of ram, leaving only approx. 1.5 for the OS and working ram.

Unfortunately, it does seem that you are correct about the small number of people that would know about the PE environment and enabling features through adding files and manually configuring and creating registry keys and values. I guess I will leave this thread up just in case, but will not be expecting too much from it. Again, I thank you for the reply and the suggestion. Being certified by Microsoft (multiple times, 5 different certs), TechNet was my first thought until I had read replies to others attempting to perform similar modification to the preinstall environment. When (not "if") I figure this out I will have to make a tutorial for others attempting similar mods to a custom winPe.
 

TenPc

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Jul 11, 2012
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I'm not actually clued up to the PE, from what you seem to want to do, it's about the amount of ram like a virtual ram drive?
Perhaps you could consider using a ram DVD disk rather than the ram itself, it would allow you to utilize the CD/DVD drive for your ram rather than sconcing from the actual ram modules however you would them lose the use of the CD/dvd drive as a drive unit while it is is being used with w DVD-RAM disk for memory.

Edit -
Just for future reference.
DISM -
DISM replaces several Windows OEM Preinstallation Kit (Windows OPK) tools including PEImg, Intlcfg, and Package Manager.
DISM Technet

.wim
Windows Imaging file format
wim
 

Bowzer

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Sep 1, 2012
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I have a usb stick that I have made bootable, holding several .wim files added to the bcd. From this I am able to service any windows 6.x operating systems, both x64 and x86. The PE that I am working on now is a custom 7pe with tools that I have personally selected (as opposed to the standard MSDaRT package [Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset]). The tools are all functional from PE, as they are designed as portable and offline tools including offline reg editor, virus scanners, startup managers, and a variety of others. I am using the DISM command to mount my .wim to my hard drive and then editing files as you would any normal file, and using an offline registry editor to make changes to the registry of the mounted .wim image. I may add this to a DVD when I am done, but as of right now I would have burned around 50 discs just in testing. From the current method, it loads the .wim into the ram and then boots as a ramdisk (using X:\ as the working directory). When I complete my edits I use the DISM command to unmounts the wim and commit the changes, and then replace the wim file on my usb stick with the newly modified one, to avoid having to rebuild the bcd for a new entry.

I have taken the .wim down to under 1gb now, which I know I can load as it was loading larger than that several times already. Apparently it has something to do with the modification of the userinit in the registry. I have pinned it down to two different changes that are triggering the boot failure. I am not sure as to why they would have any effect on the loaded drivers, as both take place after winlogon.exe but the crash happens while launching winlogon.
I have been using windows PE for years now, but decided to create my own to place the tools that I use most into one convenient bootable environment, and now I just want that environment to look good. Unfortunately this has become a personal challenge to me. If I were to stop now it would actually be fully functional and suit my needs, just not my desires. All of the technical aspects work magnificently, now I am just focused on visual aspects. Aero is officially unsupported in the windows PE, though when the right files are manually added along with creating proper registry keys and manually configuring a few services, it works flawlessly. I just have to get a certain script to run before the shell loads or it won't work. I can stop explorer.exe, run my script, start the Themes service, and then re-launch explorer.exe and it will show the taskbar with Aero enabled and the (customized) start orb that I want... I just want it to do that without me needing to interfere with the process at all. If I don't have it pinned by tonight I will just modify my script to end explorer.exe, run the functions that I need, and then re-launch explorer, but I am determined to find the way to make this work as it should.
 

TenPc

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Jul 11, 2012
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Perhaps the answer could be to have an external environment (usb stick or external hdd) in which to use your added tools so as not to absorb more than your fill of ram. Windows 7 and 8, both x32 & x64, are different environments to Vista and XP that may be causing the memory leak issue.

Aero was a Vista tool and not particularly Windows 7 or 8 compatible. If it is just the icons you are requiring then Shell32.dll is an icon library that would possibly have what you need otherwise Comctl32.dll would have the older legacy style icons.
 

Bowzer

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Sep 1, 2012
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I have discovered what is happening. It ended up having nothing to do with ram or my image size, the command to unmounts the image after editing was corrupting it. The file size would increase even if no changes were made and any attempt to boot it from there would fail.

Also, Windows Vista and 7 operate on the same (or similar) framework, both being v6.x operating systems. Windows 8 is a creature of it's own. I am not loading the different environments at once, they are loaded dependent on the system that I am working on. When I boot to the usb it gives me the option of what to boot into, just like a standard multi-boot system would, but instead of pointing to a partition to boot the bcd points to a wim image to load into ram and boots from that.
And last: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/aero
Aero was introduced in Vista, but lives strong (and much more functional without as many issues) in Win7.

All of that aside, I have been thinking my modification was causing the error when in fact every mount and dismount of my image is causing a corruption. I have contacted Microsoft directly about this issue and am now waiting to hear back from them. I will do some more testing today, as I do have a theory as to what may have been causing the issue.

I really appreciate your suggestions, and thank you very much for the advice given here. I am sorry that I had you helping solve something that wasn't even the issue to begin with. After mounting to make changes and then deciding not to mess with it any more for the night I unmounted the .wim and then seen the file size. When I noticed that I attempted to boot it (the wim that was mounted worked fine, it was my last successful build). That boot failed even though no changes were made to the image which then proved to me that it was in fact not an issue with my modification but with the way my computer was unmounting the image. I have made a lot of progress since opening this thread, so I think if I need more assistance later I would start a new topic, I will be considering this one closed for now as my original issue was solved. Thank you again for trying to help me on this!!