Booting to Various ISOs

[RobTitian16]

HI all,

I’m currently having issues booting to different ISOs. This is a follow-on from this thread:
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7703/parted-magic-boot-menu/11

I’ve added a new entry in my FOG iPXE Menu called Win10Pro64ISO and have written the following:

parted:
initrd ${boot-url}/win10pro/Win10Pro64.ISO
chain memdisk ||
echo failed to boot
prompt
goto MENU

This is almost exactly the same as the Parted Magic ISO I have working, although that is set to a different folder. (${boot-url}/pmagic/pmagic.iso)

When trying to boot from the Windows 10 Pro 64-bit ISO, however, I receive the following error:

The link provided simply tells me that the content length is mismatched, but doesn’t provide any information about how to fix it.
I’m currently running a Ubuntu 14.04 server, running FOG version 5949.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

[george1421]

I haven’t tried win10 yet, but this process works for win7: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7765/pxe-booting-into-ms-windows-7-setup

[Quazz]

What George says makes sense and will likely be the way to go (since memdisk uses RAM to store the entire unpacked ISO, which is several gigabytes with Windows), but I think there is a different reason why it’s failing in this manner and that’s the fact that you have

parted:

At the top. At least that’s my take on it.

[RobTitian16]

@Quazz I thought that - I wasn’t too sure what parted: was but assumed it was something to do with Parted Magic. I removed it to test, but I still ran into the same issue.
I’ll definitely give George’s guide a go and see if I can get it to work. Thanks for the help, guys. If I run into issues with that, I’ll post back here.

[Quazz]

@RobTitian16 Another possibility is a permissions issue if I’m not mistaken. Or path issue (aka path not found)

Extensions are typically lower case for example, might want to check that stuff.

[RobTitian16]

@Quazz Yep, I’ve checked both of those and they seem fine to me. Not having enough memory does sound like the correct answer.
It’s not too important to have this feature - it’s just a nice thing to have so we can run repairs via the iso if and when the time comes, rather than having to find a disc and then take it to the system physically.

@george1421 I’ve tried following the guide, and I became stuck on the “copy “C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\amd64\winpe.wim” C:\winpe_amd64\ISO\Sources\Boot.wim” section.

Because it’s Windows 10 ADK, I believe winpe.wim is buried in:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\en-us”.

However, I received an error saying the system can’t find the path specified for the second part of the command. I’ve taken a look and there is no ISO folder. It’s now buried in:

“C:\winPE_amd64\media\sources\boot.wim”

I assume it’s correct to overwrite this file?

[Quazz]

@RobTitian16 If you like, you can use my batchfile for this. It should work across all Windows ADK as far as I know

@echo off

rem The fileserver IP
set FILESERVER=192.168.1.155

rem Share on the fileserver.
set SHARE=INSTALLERS\ISOFILES\0-WINPE

rem Username for the share
set SHAREUSER=root

rem Password for the share
set SHAREPASS=root

rem amd64 or x86
set ARCH=amd64

rem Path to hold working files. Needs about 500MB of free space.
set PEPATH="c:\winpe_%ARCH%"

rem ##########################################################
rem     Don't edit anything below here
rem ##########################################################
 
echo Creating the PE image
call copype.cmd %ARCH% %PEPATH% > NUL
 
echo Mounting the image
dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:%PEPATH%\media\sources\boot.wim /index:1 /MountDir:%PEPATH%\mount /quiet
 
echo Adding commands to the startup script in PE
echo. >> %PEPATH%\mount\windows\system32\startnet.cmd
echo ping %FILESERVER% >> %PEPATH%\mount\windows\system32\startnet.cmd
echo net use z: \\%FILESERVER%\%SHARE% %SHAREPASS% /u:%FILESERVER%\%SHAREUSER% >> %PEPATH%\mount\windows\system32\startnet.cmd
echo z: >> %PEPATH%\mount\windows\system32\startnet.cmd
echo z:\64.bat >> %PEPATH%\mount\windows\system32\startnet.cmd
 
echo Creating the pxeboot directory
mkdir %PEPATH%\pxeboot > NUL
mkdir %PEPATH%\pxeboot\Fonts > NUL
copy /y %PEPATH%\mount\windows\boot\Fonts\*.* %PEPATH%\pxeboot\Fonts\ > NUL
copy /y "%WinPERoot%\%ARCH%\Media\Boot\boot.sdi" %PEPATH%\pxeboot\ > NUL
copy /y "%WinPERoot%\%ARCH%\Media\Boot\BCD" %PEPATH%\pxeboot\ > NUL
 
echo Unmounting the image
dism /unmount-Wim /MountDir:%PEPATH%\mount /Commit /quiet
 
echo Optimizing the image
imagex /EXPORT %PEPATH%\media\sources\boot.wim 1 %PEPATH%\pxeboot\boot.wim > NUL
 
 
echo.
echo All the files you need for your PXE server are in: %PEPATH%\pxeboot\

Adjusts the variables as needed.

Then you can have a 64.bat at the target location, which you can edit at any time to for example create a selection menu for different setup.exe files