Can't make EasyBCD run from WinPe1,2,3

MS have changed the licensing terms for winpe.

We will have to wait to hear from Mahmoud - but I am not holding out much hope.

You will have to make your own.
 
Indeed. SIW2, you have a link for that info?

Basically, MS has declined to renew any WinPE licensing agreements once they expire. We're lucky in that ours doesn't expire until August. I'm working to make replacements for the Windows Repair CDs that are Linux-based, and there is no point in creating a EasyBCD WinPE CD that will be legally defunct in less than a year (now less than six months!).
 
I don't have it direct from MS.

However, Paragon told me that software vendors will no longer be allowed to provide winpe downloads - after the expiration of their current license.

I guess that means everybody.

It will be interesting to see what you can come up with Linux wise.
 
Yeah. MS told me they were terminating the PE licensing deals globally. I'm not sure how they figure that's in their best interest... *shrug*

As for the Linux thing... I'm working on it - I have the basic partition repair and boot recovery done now, registry and sanity checks left. Doesn't look like System Restore will be possible, since Vista+ use VSS for System Restore and Linux doesn't understand that.

I can send you a beta at some point, if you like.
 
Yes, I would be interested to have a look at that.

I can't see how you can system restore going in linux either.

Users can always browse to the sys32\config\regback directory - if they are lucky there will hives that are not 0 bytes - those be copied to sys32\config.

I have done that quite a few times - fixes a lot of issues that would have been fixed by system restore , and it doesn't muck up your files.

You might be able to automate something that will do that from the linux cd.
 
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Yep; that's already in the works. Fortunately MS hasn't done away with those (though I don't know that it's necessary with the new whole-disk snapshotting via VSS). I believe this is what's known as "last good configuration" at boot time.
With XP, you could actually access the entire SR backups and manually restore those from a Linux live CD, once upon a time.
 
MS have changed the licensing terms for winpe.

We will have to wait to hear from Mahmoud - but I am not holding out much hope.

You will have to make your own.

Honestly, who cares? Just make a version that RUNS in WinPE & let the end user deal with it. There is NO need to distribute WinPE as whole (any mug can make one if they want to, or pick one up from WAIK & edit)

sebus
 
Easybcd does run in winpe. I have in 32 and 64 bit pe 3.1 and also in pe4.

If you think it is that simple - what are you waiting for.
 
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For some s*** a** comment like yours...

No, the software does NOT natively run in WinPE
Ofcourse with modifications of all sorts to the WinPE OS one can force it to run, but that it NOT the same!

sebus
 
Entirely in keeping with your post - any mug can make one , you said.

Running natively is a different thing.

I don't know if Mahmoud is able/willing to rewrite the whole thing using a completely different language.

I expect that would extremely difficult - otherwise, he would have done it already.
 
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Yes, net bloatwork is a nuisance.

I don't know if wimb ever got it working in his project - sadly, it only supports win 7 sp0.
 
EasyBCD isn't really .NET, though it did start off that way. A lot of the new code is C/C++ with its own dependencies.

Like I said, for me it's not worth the effort of fixing up a WinPE-based EasyBCD when the "ROI", so to speak, is only people who make the WinPE CD themselves. So it's not a matter of rewriting EasyBCD in another language, it's a matter of creating a BCD modification tool from scratch that will run on Linux.
 
Just make it not depend on the whole OS to change/edit/add a simple BCD entry. Most programs can run fine in WinPE, I see no reason why EasyBCD should be different

Forget the Linux tool, no need for this!

sebus
 
Mahmoud

I agree with Sebus on this one.

I am disappointed to see that a year after i first read your posts on this forum regarding this topic, that you sound less enthusiastic now that you did a year ago.

We manage over 15,000 end user machines and about 300 physical servers.

We have seen a clear trend over the past 4 or so years with the move from non-MS boot disks to the vast majority being based on WinPE 2.0+. Most moved to WinPE 3.0 when it was released due to the significant advantages it offers to vendors who already offer Windows based tools porting their tools to a pre-boot environment, and the benefits for creating and managing WinPE disks through the WAIK/ADK system of importing modules.

Rather than having (hundreds of) proprietary boot disks for each different system/server (recovery disks and support tools etc.), we have managed to consolidate nearly all the tools from WinPE based disks into a single master boot disk that our engineers and technicians use dozens of times a day.

Most importantly, the new ADK creates WinPE 4.0 bootable media. WinPE 4.0 is currently the only pre-boot media fully compatible with the new UEFI BIOSs (in other words, UEFI devices which do not support legacy BIOS mode are likely NOT to be able to boot from WinPE 3.0 and older - for example this is the case on some Windows 8 tablets, devices which can only boot from their single USB port).

Separately, UEFI also introduced a new feature called Secureboot which limits which operating systems the UEFI will allow the device to boot from (GPT i think).

What I feel this means to you and your business is that the Linux bootable distro you talk of will become obsolete/unusable by many/most customers probably before it is released.

There are already customers crying out for the ability to use your tool to fix boot issues, from a WinPE environment. I expect with WinPE 4 many of the pre-reqs can be included using the tools to import those modules, for example netfx, WMI, scripting/Powershell.


Mahmoud - Have you even tried booting from a CD/USB with WinPE on it, and running EasyBCD and seeing whether it works? I am certain the work involved to iron out any issues would be easier than complete a re-write for Linux. WinPE licensing is completely irrelevant. Customers will create their own WinPE media, they just want to be able to copy EasyBCD to the same media, and run it without issues.


I hope this helps you continue the great work on EasyBCD.

Kind regards


Mike
 
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Easybcd works fine in my winpe4 media.

Not easy to make it though.

You should find it easier to make winpe3 media.

That should boot just fine if you write both bios and efi bootsector to the iso.

Secure boot can be turned off.

I understand the Linux foundation has a pre boot loader which they are going to get signed - then it will be available to all to include in their boot media.
 
Mike, we are working on a Linux-based UEFI-compatible solution and are almost there.

That said, even if you could get EasyBCD to run on your WinPE 4.0 CDs, please note that you may not do so without the proper EasyBCD commercial licensing agreement.
 
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