China DOS Union

There is a piece of software on the Internet called bart build pe. It was written by foreigners and can be used to make a graphical-interface PE. Related materials can be found on the Computer Enthusiast website. The CD edition of XP on the Snoopy 3.8 CD was made with this. I also learned to make one myself, and it feels pretty good. You can integrate all kinds of software into it.

Please repost it,
Can it connect to the network?

Of course it can support getting on the Internet through a proxy gateway on a LAN.
But recently I found a problem with one of its Chinese plugins. In chs.inf there is this line:
0x1, "Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics", "StatusFont", \
It should be changed to:
0x3, "Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics", "StatusFont", \

Latest download location
http://public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/nu2files/pebuilder3024.zip
Chinese plugin address
http://bbs.wwwfox.net/non-cgi/usr/2/2_11718_47.rar

The related Computer Enthusiast article is in issue 21. It seems it still hasn't been put online yet, so take a look at this first: www.fixdown.com/article/article/1574.htm


Windows PE's full name is Windows Preinstallation
Environment. It is based on the Windows
XP kernel, can boot the system, read and write FAT32/NTFS partitions, access the network, and has a graphical interface, so it is very suitable as an emergency platform after a system crash for system maintenance. Unfortunately, ordinary users have not received authorization from Microsoft, so they cannot use Windows
PE.
　　Now things are better: we can use Bart’s PE Builder to create a bootable CD or DVD. Its functions are similar to Windows
PE. After booting, it can create a 32-bit graphical operating environment, supports networking and remote management, supports FAT32, NTFS, CDFS and various other partition formats, uses an 800×600 resolution, and can be used to diagnose or repair a system. The latest version currently supports Windows
XP and Windows Server 2003.
　　Step 1: Preparation
　　First, free up a partition on the hard disk with relatively large remaining space (at least 300MB free), to store the ISO image file or temporary burning files. Extract the downloaded pebuilder3015.zip file, then double-click pebuilder.exe. In the popup window, click the “Next” button to go to the next step.
　　Step 2: Set the file source
（1）Path to Windows installation files: path to the Windows installation files
　　You can choose the installation CD, or the local hard disk or network location (for this, the files on the installation CD must first be copied to the hard disk). Bart’s PE
Builder supports versions such as Windows XP Home/Professional and Windows Server 2003 Web
Edition/Standard Edition/Enterprise Edition. Unfortunately, it does not support Windows 2000.
　　（2）Path to your already installed Windows: an existing Windows system on the local machine or network
　　This shows the Windows system detected on the local machine, for example “C：\WINDOWS”. Usually there is no need to change it. Of course, you can also choose another Windows system on the network, but it must be the same system version as the one in “Path
to Windows installation
files”. The main point is that the version of the “\i386\ntdll.dll” file must match. For example, if the Windows
XP in your system has already installed SP1, but the installation CD is still plain Windows XP, then you can only remake a Windows
XP CD that includes SP1, otherwise it will report an error.
　　（3）Add files/folders this（custom）directory to
ISO: add custom files or folders to the ISO image file. Here we can add specific files or folders, for example Foxmail, FlashGet, QQ and so on. Just click the browse button on the right.
　　Step 3: Set network services
　　If the “Enable Network
Support” checkbox is selected, then after booting successfully with this tool disc you will be able to access the network. But if you want to use this function, you need to prepare the two files factory.exe and netcfg.exe in advance, or the two files x86factory.exe and x86netcfg.exe, and the version of factory.exe must be higher than 5.2.3790. You can get these two files from the “\support\tools\deploy.cab” archive on the Windows
Server 2003 installation CD, or from the Windows
Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools package. These two files total 12MB.

Step 4: Configure plugins
　　Plugins are equivalent to software installed in a Windows desktop system. Bart’s PE
Builder itself already has 25 built-in plugins such as ERD2002, Ghost32, Irfanview, Nero Birning
Rom, and Ramdisk. Some plugins can be used directly after being added; some plugins such as Total
Commander and Ad-Aware still require the corresponding program files to be added before use; and these 4 plugins—Disk Commander, ERD Commander
2002, Ghost32, and Nero Burning Rom—can only be used after payment.
　　This shows the activation status of all plugins under the current settings. If the “Enabled” column shows “Yes”, it means the plugin has been activated. For example, the “Boot
Fix” plugin can display the message “Press any key to boot from
CD” at startup. If it shows “No”, then the plugin has not been activated. We can use the “Enable/Disable” button to choose whether to activate the plugin, while the “Edit” button can reconfigure options such as the plugin program's installation source and program name.
Tip: If the plugin files are incomplete, after clicking the “Enable/Disable” button it will prompt for the missing files. You can download the corresponding software and install it in Windows, then according to the prompt, copy the missing files into the Plugins directory. More detailed hints can be obtained by clicking the “PluginHelp” button.
　　Each plugin folder contains at least three files: *.htm, *.inf, and *.xml. More plugins can also be downloaded from http：//www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#plugin In addition, you can also customize plugins yourself. That requires copying the corresponding files into the Plugins directory and writing the corresponding INF file, which I won't go into here.
Step 5: Output settings
　　The default output path is “c：\pebldr”, while the ISO image file will be placed in the system temporary directory. Of course, you can also set it differently. The only requirement is that the target drive must have enough available space.
Step 6: Create the ISO file
　　Click the “Next” button, and Bart’s PE
Builder will immediately start the creation process. The system will first copy the necessary files from the Windows installation CD to the output directory set earlier, which takes some time. Wait patiently a moment, and an ISO-format CD image file will be created. The default filename is pebuilder.iso.
　　Finally, burn this ISO file to a CD, and you will have a customized Windows
PE tool disc. After booting the system with this tool disc, the interface shown in Figure 5 will appear. Operating under this interface, I believe there shouldn't be any problem, right?

If you don't like its Start button, you can edit a BMP image you like, name it nu2go.bmp, and add it to the folder on the CD that contains nu2menu.exe.
It also supports using memory to create a virtual B: drive with a minimum size of 32M. If you want to make the B: drive smaller so it can run on a machine with 64M of memory, you can modify the related INF file for the plugin. In ramdisk.inf there is this line:
RamDiskDiskSize="0x02000000"
Change it to:
RamDiskDiskSize="0x00200000"
That changes 32M into 2M; the calculation here is in 16-bit.

The utility software uses an XML language framework, so we can easily modify the English parts in the menu.

When making the CD you must choose “network autorun”. That way when PE starts up, the system will call a file named autorun.cmd to invoke the network functions. We can make use of this by adding some commands in the autorun.cmd file as startup programs. For example, by using “reg import *.reg ” you can import into the temporary registry the registry information corresponding to programs that originally could only run from the hard disk, so that they can run from the CD (the winimg program needs to be registered in order to run relatively smoothly; we can edit its registration information into a reg file, and by this method it won't need to be registered again in PE).

Thanks, I gained a lot from this.

The following is quoted from dos时代菜鸟 at 2003-12-22 2:11:00:
When making the CD you must choose “network autorun”. That way when PE starts up, the system will call a file named autorun.cmd to invoke the network functions. We can make use of this by adding some commands in the autorun.cmd file as startup programs. For example, by using  “reg import *.reg ”     you can import into the temporary registry the registry information corresponding to programs that originally could only run from the hard disk, so that they can run from the CD (the winimg program needs to be registered in order to run relatively smoothly; we can edit its registration information into a reg file, and by this method it won't need to be registered again in PE).

How does it compare with MiniWin98?

PE can recognize NTFS partitions, so it is most suitable for specifically maintaining XP systems. But mini98 cannot recognize NTFS partitions. Even if you add NTFS partition recognition software, it can only support displaying English filenames.

The following is quoted from dos时代菜鸟 at 2003-12-29 23:25:36:
PE can recognize NTFS partitions, so it is most suitable for specifically maintaining XP systems. But mini98 cannot recognize NTFS partitions. Even if you add NTFS partition recognition software, it can only support displaying English filenames.

Thank you. It seems that PE is not a fully blown OS and cannot be used to run certain applications. Is it right?

In PE there really are some programs that do not run smoothly. This has a lot to do with its DLL runtime libraries and temporary registry. It depends on the operator's familiarity with the XP system and the corresponding applications, as well as their skill in editing the registry. In theory, applications ought to be able to run just as they do in XP on the hard disk, but then that also involves software copyright issues.

Take a look here ftp://wuyou:wuyou@61.240.110.168/

The following is quoted from dos时代菜鸟 at 2004-1-4 15:01:58:
Take a look here ftp://wuyou:wuyou@61.240.110.168/

What is there, a lot of files?

Any description?

A mini98.iso only 1.4M?

ftp://wuyou:wuyou@61.240.110.168/
There is one inside called “光盘上运行的xp.iso”; it should be a work by “深山红叶”.