Greetings!

I am creating a new BartPE disc, and many thanks to those that have created & posted plugins. Since I am quite new at this, perhaps someone can point me in the right direction.

I have an XPE 1.05 disc that appears to be created with BartPE. It has a number of applications that I would like to include on my new BartPE disc, but I have no idea how to do this. It has system32, programs & I386 folders but I cannot locate a .cab file to put in to the new plugins folder. I did find a 1.05 cab file on this site, but I don't know if it contains all the info needed for all the programs on the disc. Do I just use the 10.5 plugin & copy all the contents of the 1.05 cd in to the BartPE plugins directory? I have the same situation with Ghost, Acronis, Partition Manager & other programs on boot cd"s that I would like to add to my new BartPE disc as well, so I could really start making some progress if I could get this one figured out.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Don

Well, it's easy, choose one:

1. you built yourself your "old" BartPE's or bootCD's (and thus you need NOT help, you only need to remember how you made them)
2. you got them from "somewhere" on the net, in which case you won't have ANY support from here

The WHOLE point about PEbuilder(s) is that you build yourself your PE starting from your own licensed software, not that you go "shopping" around the net and include/import whatever you find in your newly built "super-mega-PE".

jaclaz

I did not build the old BartPE disc that I have nor get it from somewhere on the net, I was given a copy by a fellow tech. I'm also not "shopping" around the net trying to include bootleg software. everything I am putting on I either own or is freeware.

What I'm trying to do is both update & consolidate the recovery & troubleshooting app's that I already have on to a new BartPE disc. It's cool if you personally don't have any help to give. But that doesn't mean that you need to be a judgmental ass with your nose in the air.

You are the only one being an a$$ up to this point... jaclaz is a moderator and straightening out jerks like you is part of what that position requires. BTW, talking like you did to a moderator ( or even other user ) is not a wise move if you want to continue posting on this or any forum.... Posting on a forum is a privilage, not a right, and if you are not careful, you may loose that privilage.

Technically ( if you really want a jerk answers )

1. The disk you have is a bootleg pirated version since you didn't create it yourself from your very own copy of Windows. BartPE must be created from your own legal copy of Windows ... Windows is copyrighted so if you didn't create it, then its a bootleg version.

2. To recreate a new disk, you need to have the original plugin or plugins that was included in the original one you've been using illegally... its not as simple as just copying files in many if not most cases.

3. You must have a legal license to use whatever software you do include. This also includes freeware which in many cases is not free for business use. Since each software has it's own unique license agreement... it will be up to you to ensure you are following it.

Here is a quick rundown of the steps you must perform. Only use a legal copy of Windows that you own yourself ( or your business provided you a license to use )... Get copies of all plugins that you need and have a legal license to use and place them in the BartPE\plugin folder... Have BartPE create the ISO ... burn that new ISO to a disk or use a util to copy it to a USB drive.

I don't know, rdsok, looking back on my original post I seemed to be pretty polite & grateful in advance for anyone giving me constructive input. I didn't deserve to be spanked by jaclaz for asking some honest questions, and reacted accordingly. But I also appreciate you responding in a civil tone to answer some of my questions.

In my dozen years of doing support work I have picked up some utilities that have been really useful, along with an A+/MCSE & CCNA. I've probably got 8 legal copies of XP, along with every OS through SBS 2008. I don't run illegal software, and the troubleshooting app's I have I was told were either free or shareware. In some cases I have licensed programs like Acronis 10, but don't have the skills to create a plugin. That's why I'm here learning to do something new. Thanks to your input I've learned that I need plugins for everything I put on the disc, and it is not as simple as copying an app's folder to the Bart plugin folder, even when I own the software. Last week I learned that I needed a text editor to modify .inf files to work within Bart, as some of the postings here stated. So I'm beginning to get a better handle on the process. It would be stunning if someone created a "Bart plugin maker" for folks like me that don't have the skills to write code but have legal app's they want to include on the CD. So for now I will search for pre-made plugins that work with the app's that I have.

Thanks again for your help.

Recreating a BartPE CD without the original PEBuilder folder will be tedious at best. PEBuilder gives you a basic shell and all the goodies that you can add are created by downloading plugins to be added to PEBuilder. Once added you then run PEBuilder to create a new BartPE system and write it to a CD, or a USB, if you so desire.

Plugins can be in .cab format, in which case you add them to PEBuilder via PEBuilder's Add plugin function. Plugins can also be in .zip format, in which case you extract the contents of the .zip file to folders you manually create in the PEBuilder\plugins folder.

Plugins rarely include the actual executables, rather they consist of .inf, xml, cmd and htm files that allow you to add your version of an app's execuables to the plugin folder and create a functional BartPE app.

Take a review of this link to get an idea where to start: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/


Notepad is all you need to work with any of the plugin files.

After looking over a variety of posts on this site it seems that there are a number of other tech's that have multiple recovery CD's that they want to combine in to one. Thanks to the clarity of your response I see that this can be a real pain! I'd like to have new versions of the tools from the old CD's, so the solution is to find those plugins & create an entirely new CD.

Initially I've been under the impression that I needed both a .cab file AND the unzipped files in a plugins folder, and needed to create/add the .cab file via the PEBuilder dashboard. Now I understand that the plugins folder files take the place of adding the plugin with a .cab file. Cool!

I downloaded a text editor because notepad would not correctly save an inf file I created (this is on a Win7 Ultimate box), it always added a .txt after the .inf extension. But it is good to know that this process can be handled within notepad itself.

Thanks so much for taking the time to clear up the fog I have been looking through, Ed! I note that you commented on my response concerning the Paragon plugin, and will review that next to see if it makes more sense now.

In Notepad... you just select to save as "All files" type instead of a text type so that it will save with extentions other than txt.... this is pretty much common knowledge stuff.

Thanks, rdsok. Sometimes we forget what has become common knowledge to us because we do it every day is different for a new user. I run in to this all the time teaching someone to configure a router/firewall or setup Exchange on a server. I've never had the need to create .inf & .cmd files before, but I sure added the process in to my notes for building a PE disc!

Hey supportguy, welcome to the forums from another newbie. I think we have a lot in common--I am also a network admin dealing largely with Exchange and firewalls. I have a slight leg up in that I dealt with BartPE a good bit a number of years ago then recently "rediscovered" it. It is not too tough to work with once you get your head wrapped around it.

Essentially, since PE is a special Windows installation designed originally for system builders to preload systems it has some significant limitations. As you have figured out, you add software by creating a plugin which contains the softwares executable and required support files plus an inf file that tells PEbuilder where those files should be copied to in the bootable image plus any registry entries that are required. There will also be an xml file that sets up the menu options for which ever menu system you are using (there are a couple.) Then in most cases there is also a cmd file which is just a batch file with the final commands to actually run the program within the PE environment--the menu will call this file.

May I suggest you take a look at the ubcd4win project. It has a lot of what you are going to want already in place. Also, my guess is you own a subscription to TechNet--my experience is that the TechNet XPSP3 image is the best version of XP to use. Since there is no slipstreaming of service packs involved, the SP3 version is only 5MB bigger than the SP2 version and the builtin driver support is much better.

Hiya Menneset! Yes, I've been getting some great guidance from folks in this forum who are showing a great deal of patience while I get dialed in on BartPE. The program execution makes a lot more sense now, though it will atke a lot of time to learn to write my own command file. I was under the impression that I could copy the application files (or just the .exe) in to a folder & create a plugin "shortcut" and I'd be good to go. A couple tech's in the past had "uber discs", which I assume is the ubcd4win project you mentioned. Thanks for the tip, I'll have to check that out. I came across a excellent post by Ed_P that was like finding gold for me, it showed the actual structure of PE as well as explained the need for various driver packages (hadn't thought of that one yet). Having a variety of SATA & RAID drivers is pretty important for what I do, so I've been downloading those before moving them in to the PE folders as the post outlines.

I am spoiled by having a TechNet subscription, and recently built an SBS 2008 x64 box. That really brought the need home to be able to create a boot & recovery disc that will work on a x64 platform. I did slipstream SP3 on to an XP Pro Enterprise x86 image, and I agree the added driver & networking support is well worth it, so I'll look for the updated image that already includes SP3. It would have been cool to be able to combine the 4 discs that I currently have for recovery & repair on to a new one, but it makes more sense to get plugins for the new tools rather than the 5 year old ones. So no doubt you will see me popping up here & there as I bumble my way through the forums learning something new.

Thanks again!

Ah... that explains your lack of knowledge, one of those sissy IT guys....

I always got a kick out of teasing with the CNE's and CNI's ( Novell certifications, MS was still a nobody upstart in those days ) for not knowing the standard port address's for serial ports or parallel ports .... they'd always have to get a REAL technician to setup their modem pools and print servers because they couldn't remember some basic settings for the hardware....

Of course its been about 10+ years since I setup a VPN tunnel connection between Cisco routers also... so you could pick on me for that since I doubt if I could do it without reading the instructions again.... Of course, they may have it almost automated now and I wouldn't know since its been so long.




You may want to retract that part of your statement after you look at the drivers.cab in both SP2 and SP3... same size, same file date. This is a common misconception.