As a stand-alone pre-installation environment and other installer and recovery technologies, Windows PE is the smallest Win32 subsystem with limited services, based on the Windows XP Professional kernel running in protected mode. It includes the minimum functionality required to run Windows installers and scripts, connect to network shares, automate basic processes, and perform hardware verification. Today we will introduce WindowsPE usage.
Windows PE
Windows PreInstallation Environment (Windows PE) Direct Literally translated is "Windows pre-installation environment", Microsoft released on July 22, 2002, its original interpretation is: "Windows pre-installation environment (Windows PE) is the smallest Win32 subsystem with limited services, Based on the Windows XP Professional kernel running in protected mode. It includes the minimum functionality required to run Windows installers and scripts, connect to network shares, automate basic processes, and perform hardware verification. In other words, you can think of Windows PE as a Mini operating system with only minimal core services. Microsoft introduced such an operating system of course because it has a different system function. If you want to explain it in one sentence, I think the main difference between Windows PE and Win9X/2000/XP is that it can be customized. Its own bootable copy keeps the minimum operating system size while guaranteeing the core services you need, and it is the standard 32-bit Windows API system platform. Of course, it may be difficult to understand this now. It doesn't matter. Let's take a closer look at it.
Windows PE Overview
Even with the explanation just now, you must be confused about this new concept of the Mini operating system. It doesn't matter. Here I will demonstrate the whole process of running it. I believe you may see it after reading it. There will be a general understanding. The Windows PE CD that most people get (including the ISO image disc I have on hand) should be a Windows XP OPK® CD, which means the Windows XP OEM Preinstallation Kit CD. In fact, the Windows XP OPK CD is a bootable copy of the 32-bit version of Windows PE. That is, this CD is already an operating system defined with Windows PE, and we can use it directly to boot the system. First look at the directory structure of this CD, a total of 352MB, is it a bit big? In fact, because this is a copy (at least contains a lot of drivers), the size is determined by the custom production at that time, if it is Windows PE A 32-bit non-customized version with a mirror on disk of approximately 120MB.
1. Guide Windows PE
The author considers the network environment and other issues, the main use environment is VMware virtual machine and Virtual PC virtual machine, but these two virtual machine environments are almost the same as the actual PC environment (that is to say If you don't know the virtual machine, it doesn't matter, it should be run directly on the real PC).
Set the BIOS to boot and start the system. When “Press any key boot from cd” appears on the screen, press any key to boot from Windows PE on the CD-ROM drive. If your storage device driver is not supported, press the F6 key at startup to load the driver for the particular device. When booting to the desktop, the system will do some work such as adjusting the resolution. Finally, open the default CMD command line explanation tool. Let's take a look at the real graphical operating environment.
You can see that the desktop is empty, don't expect to use the mouse to click, after all, what application is not installed; in addition, although the executable command line tools on the CD are limited, it is obvious that you can add it yourself. Look at what this is? Yes, it is the minesweeper game we are most familiar with (now know what the head is pointing, huh, huh), let's play with the mouse, this is the author from the familiar WinXP operating system ( The method is very simple, just copy the image file directly into the image file with the ISO tool).
Then go back to the CMD command line tool first. The default directory is \\I386\\system32\\, enter the command line “dir *.exe /w” to see which programs are available. Below we actually study the operation of Windows PE features that have practical meaning for individual users.
The 32-bit and 64-bit operating system tools can be seen in the CD image. For individual users, you can use it to directly boot a machine without any system and implement many functions of the 32-bit system. This will come together later.
2.Windows PE support for the network
We just saw the ping command when we dir, readers who are familiar with this command should know that only the TCP/IP protocol can be used, then regardless of the three seven twenty-one, First try to ping yourself, type "> ping 127.0.0.1” in CMD, and get back to it, obviously it can be pinged, which proves that the TCP/IP protocol is already running. Try another command IPConfig on the CD and type it to see that the IP address has been automatically assigned. Since the network is indeed connected, let us use it in practice (there may be a lot of friends who come into contact with the computer from the Windows system will be overwhelmed by the operation, but it is not as difficult as imagined, you can use the command in CMD. Tool belt “ /? & rdquo; parameters to query the specific use method, if you have XP installed on the machine, then it is more convenient to query in the help center, more experiments, you will find a lot of convenience after mastering the command line).
Now my physical machine and virtual machine become a virtual network, use the net command in the CD image, type "<quo;net view" in the virtual machine to view the connected server, the server shown here"XQ-B6QAS26953 EC”, the name indicates that the virtual machine has connected my physical machine through the network. I have a folder named TUKU on my physical machine that I have shared, so type "<;net use e:\\XQ-B6QAS26953EC\\TUKU”" to mean mirroring the shared directory TUKU on the physical machine to E on the virtual machine. Disk, after successful, you can freely access the shared directory in the virtual machine, then you can use this to do remote installation and other work. The net command has a lot of parameters, you can consult and try more, you can play Windows PE's powerful network environment function, if you simply access the server, the above two command parameters are basically enough. However, it should be remembered that Windows PE machines can access other operating system machines, and the reverse operation is not possible. This is due to the limitations of Windows PE itself. We will talk about this later. The facts show that Windows PE can use the network environment after booting.