Trilight Zone

[digital8]

1. Boot into Windows XP SP2

2. Install the Windows XP Recovery Console (winnt32 /cmdcons)

3. Create a folder named C:\MININT

4. Insert the WinPE 2004 or WinPE 2005 CD and copy the contents of the i386 folder to C:\MININT

Example: xcopy <CD-Drive>:\i386\*.* c:\Minint /e

5. To avoid the dreadful "reboot" dialog box when booting WinPE, move the c:\minint\winbom.ini file to c:\ (or don't use factory -winpe to start networking in WinPE). You may skip this step if you actually like that dialog box

Example: move c:\minint\winbom.ini c:\

6. If using WinPE 2005 built from Windows Server 2003 SP1 media, copy c:\Minint\setupldr.bin to c:\cmldr (replace existing file). If using WinPE 2004 or 2005 built from Windows XP SP2 media, skip this step.

Example:
attrib c:\cmldr -r -s -h
copy c:\Minint\setupldr.bin c:\cmldr /y

6. Add the following entry to boot.ini

C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows PE"

Example boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows PE"

Note 1: Don't replace the existing Windows XP SP2 NTLDR as per WinPE docs. CMLDR will be used for WinPE when dualbooting

Note 2: If you add/remove partitions to the harddrive you need to reinstall the recovery console in order to build a new BOOTSECT.DAT file.

Note 3: If you don't want to have the recovery console installed, copy the c:\cmdcons\bootsect.dat to c:\minint, uninstall the recovery console and update boot.ini to reflect the new path.