If using SysPrep and DISM\IMAGEX to deploy Windows, watch out for this trap!

If you boot to Windows PE and use some sort of script to install Windows OS's to systems using ImageX or DISM, you should check your NTFS Junction points!

So after you have deployed the image and it is booting to Windows nicely, simply drop to an Admin command shell and type  dir /aL

Check your Junctions!

You should see that the Junctions and Symlinks all point to the Windows drive.

If they do not, then you may get some weird problems when installing or running some programs, or with some internal Windows functions.

How to boot 'Gandalf's Win10PE x86 Redstone-11-07-2016_x64.iso' (or any WinBuilder ISO)

The Gandalf WinPE ISO Gandalf's Win10PE x86 Redstone-11-07-2016_x64.iso cannot be easily booted using Easy2Boot (or any similar system).

This is because the filename used by Gandalf contains spaces and there is a bug in the MountPEMedia.exe utility used by WinBuilder PE's - they will not load the .ISO file as the Y: drive if it uses a .ini file and the .iso file contains spaces in the filename.

Note:
If you use E2B v1.90+, then Gandalf and other WinBuilder-based WinPE ISOs will just work! Simply ensure that there are no spaces in the filename and that the file extension is .iso (not .isodefault).

E2B v1.89 released

• New self-extracting exe file format for downloads (can be renamed to .zip for extraction)
• MAKE_E2B_USB_DRIVE.cmd script now tests for >137GB drives and prompts you to select a partition size of 137GB for best compatibility (or MAX)
• Make_E2B.exe red button automatically reduces partition size to 137GB if target drive is over 137GB (no user prompt) and always uses NTFS
• German translation for E2B menu has minor changes (thanks to Frettt!).
• Utilities - Measure BIOS performance, now reports results in seconds
• SWITCH_E2B new version 1.0.14
• NoF1F7F8F9F10 MyE2B.cfg file in Themes folder added (to configure a Menu without the menu items for F1-F10)

Download page here.

New version of WinNTSetup available from JFX

Using WinNTSetup, you can install from virtually any Windows Installer ISO from within a WinPE environment.

Version 3.8.7.1  (latest is now 3.8.7.3) of WinNTSetup3 is now available from here from JFX on MSFN.

It has several bug fixes. You should now be able to run a diskpart script (using undocumented ctrl+shift+D command) to partition and format a drive and also it can now directly access a Windows ISO file to get at the install.wim or install.esd file without needing to extract it. The .iso file will be mounted by ImDisk when selected.

This new version also now works with Microsoft ISOs that contain \Sources\Install.esd files and \x86\Sources\Install.esd and \x64\Source\Install.esd files.

For more details (and how to MBR-boot to WinPE to prepare a GPT disk for a UEFI installation of Windows - even using SDI_CHOC too) see here for the best way to use WinNTSetup from an E2B USB drive.

E2B v.1.89e Beta available

Changes from previous Beta:

• Utilities - Measure BIOS performance, now reports results in seconds
• SWITCH_E2B.exe  v1.0.14

Brian contacted me about a problem he had with SWITCH_E2B.exe v.1.0.13 on his Windows 8.1 system. It reported a getFileExtents (GFE) error when first launched, and after pressing OK, it would not list any drives in the drive list.

It turns out that the GFE error was due to the getFileExtents.exe helper file not liking BitLocker C: drives (SWITCH_E2B.exe extracts it's files to a temporary folder on the C: drive and then checks that getFileExtents works).

The next issue was caused by one of the other USB drives that he had already attached to his Windows system. It had a drive letter of B: (A: and B: are usually reserved for floppy drives). He got a 'READ ERROR' and the drive list code aborted. The new version of SWITCH_E2B.exe does not abort (but will not list drives A: or B:). RMPrepUSB also does not like USB drives being drive A: or B: either!

Fix non-adjustable brightness on AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series notebooks for Windows 10

If you have a notebook with Windows 10 that uses the AMD Radeon (Catalyst) graphics chipset, you may find that the default AMD video driver that is automatically installed by Windows does not support any brightness adjustment.

This means that the notebook battery will not last as long because it is always on full brightness.

This is a VERY common problem on Windows 10 notebooks with AMD graphics that have been re-installed, so you should always check that the brightness controls work after re-installing Windows or Windows drivers and for that matter, all the special control features (Fn keys, etc) on the notebook.

You can install the standard Microsoft Windows 10 VGA driver, but this reduces the maximum screen resolution (even though the brightness control does then work).

It turns out the solution is a simple registry fix.

Virtual Box 'VT-x is not available. (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX)' error

Most modern CPUs support VT-x. This allows VBox to run much faster.

You can use VBox+VMUB to boot directly from a USB drive within Windows.
Note that the USB drive will be seen as a SATA or IDE hard disk by the guest OS (not as a USB drive and not as a 'Removable' drive - so E2B Windows Installs from an ISO will not work correctly).

In order to enable VT-x, you need to have a VT-x capable CPU, then enable VT-x in the BIOS settings and make sure that no other software is 'grabbing' that resource (e.g. Hyper-V).

There is a good article on How-to Geek about this.

My VBox was working fine until I upgraded my system to Win10 Pro for £2.84 (see previous blog post)  and installed Hyper-V as a Windows 'Feature'. Then I got the dreaded Virtual Box 'VT-x is not available. (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX)' error message when trying to use VMUB.

It seems the only solution was to uninstall Hyper-V, so now it is all working again!

How to make a .VHD from a .imgPTN file (or how to copy all Windows files to a different drive)

Basically, I had a complete working Windows installation on a disk Volume and I just wanted to copy all files to another disk Volume...

Actually, I had created a new 16GB NTFS  .imgPTN file and installed WindowsToGo onto it.
The .imgPTN file booted to Windows nicely.

However, I wanted to convert the partition to a .VHD fixed-size (not dynamic) file so I could add it to my E2B drive and boot directly to it without having to 'switch' partitions - this would allow me to directly access all of the files on the E2B drive after I had booted from the VHD.

Since the WinToGo partition was located on a 500GB USB drive, I did not want to use a DisktoVHD conversion tool because I would end up with a 500GB .VHD file!

I could not find a way to simply copy the files from the USB drive to an empty VHD virtual drive. I kept running into permission issues, symbolic link issues, locked files and other access problems caused by Windows thinking the files were important OS files!

Even upgrading my Windows Home OS to Pro and using VSS didn't help.

After asking the good guys on reboot.pro, it was suggested I use Olof's strarc utility and it worked a treat!

Here is what I did:

How to upgrade to (or get) Win 10 Pro for £2.84p!

I wanted to copy a full Windows installation from a USB drive to a VHD, but I was being constantly frustrated by Windows 10 locking some of the files in the \Windows folder on the USB drive. This was preventing me from copying many of the Windows files on the USB drive to the VHD, even though I had booted to Windows 10 Home from my hard disk and Windows shouldn't even be locking the files on the USB drive!

Now there are several solutions to copying 'locked' files, but none of them were successful because I was running Windows 10 Home and I suspected that the problem might be connected the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Hyper-V not being supported in Windows Home. I could have resorted to booting to WinPE, mounting the VHD using Diskpart and then copying over the files, but this would be inconvenient if I had to do this many times in a day.

So, I decided to upgrade my Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro and spend the £2.84p required (and hang the expense!).

Here is how I did it...

Add LibreElec 'Krypton' KODI to E2B

The new Kodi 'Krypton' version is available as a LibreElec Beta build here.

I used LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-7.95.1.img.gz
You can follow the instructions in a previous blog to get it working with persistence on your E2B drive.

LibreElec Krypton booted from E2B on my IdeaPad 300

You may need to use a real system (not VBOX) and a USB 2.0 port to get it to work!