WinPE ISO

[B00ze]

Good day.

Suggestion: Make a WinPE ISO for the portable version - this would save me the trouble of learning how to configure PE to run a program and then build it with DISM and WAIK/WADK. Portable version is needed to be able to do the "read/write/read" test on system partition when said partition has developed bad blocks (in my case, "slow" blocks, but Windows times-out reading them, might as well call them bad - the hope is that the drive will re-allocate the blocks when the test is run).

Question: Portable version - do you think it will run fine in WinPE if copied to the WinPE RAM drive during WinPE boot? And where is the registration information stored? i.e. Can I run HDS Portable from a folder on my hard disk, register it (which hopefully creates a file in that folder) and then build the WinPE with that folder, making it a portable registered version?

Thank you.
Best Regards.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and the tip!
Yes, it would be useful - but due to licensing issues / restrictions, it is not really possible to share a such WinPE ISO.
Yes, it is good way to use the Portable version of Hard Disk Sentinel Pro with that.

Yes, the Portable version should run with no problems if you copy to the RAM drive. Just make sure to copy all files (including the HDSDATA folder) of the Portable version. This contains the settings, data/logs and (most important) the registration details.
So yes, things exactly works as you wrote: you can register Hard Disk Sentinel Pro Portable (on your system, a removable pendrive or so) and can build the WinPE with that folder (including the HDSDATA subfolder) to have the Portable version and use by the WinPE.

[B00ze]

There are ways around the distribution restrictions; Ghost for instance comes with the PE WIM and builds the ISO with that.
But alright, I'll look into it and try to remember to reply back with some sort of instructions on how to do it...
Thanks for the reply. Just bought a 5-pack pro license; good tool, good support.
Best Regards,

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your kind words and your support!

Maybe with special licensing conditions, it is possible. To be honest, I'm not really sure about it, but if you have the opportunity to check and may give instructions about how to create it, I'm sure it would help lots of users
Thanks so much !

[B00ze]

Alright, so I played around with WAIK (version 3.1, Windows-7-based) and HDSentinel appears to run just fine under it - amazing, you've managed not to depend on anything fancy, and not to crash when things (like the Systray, WMI, etc) are missing completely. Realtime performance data is unavailable, but SMART and disk tests work fine. Here's a quick guide; use Google to customize this further (like setting screen resolution to 1024x768 instead of default 800x600). Also, all your paths will be different than mine, obviously...

1- Get and install WAIK
2- Open the WAIK command Shell
3- CopyPE x86 D:\WinPE31
4- Copy D:\WinPE31\winpe.wim D:\WinPE31\ISO\sources\boot.wim
5- DISM /Mount-Wim /WimFile:D:\WinPE31\ISO\sources\boot.wim /index:1 /MountDir:D:\WinPE31\mount
6- To add drivers -> DISM /Image:D:\WinPE31\mount /Add-Driver /Driver:D:\MyDrivers /recurse /ForceUnsigned
7- Copy your registered HDS Portable to D:\WinPE31\mount\HDS
8- Modify D:\WinPE31\mount\Windows\System32\startnet.cmd and add "@PATH=%SYSTEMDRIVE%\HDS;%PATH%" (no quotes)
9- DISM /image:D:\WinPE31\mount /set-ScratchSpace:128
A- DISM /unmount-wim /Mountdir:D:\WinPE31\mount /commit
B- Oscdimg -n -bD:\WinPE31\Etfsboot.com D:\WinPE31\ISO D:\WinPE31\HDSBOOTABLE.iso
C- Burn the ISO...

Boot with the ISO and just type "HDSentinel" in the Shell, and voila :-)
If you want HDS to start automatically, just add HDSentinel.exe to the startnet.cmd...
If you want HDS to start maximized (and centered on screen), modify your HDSentinel.ini, add MAX=1 to the [Width] section...

Best Regards,

[hdsentinel]

Thanks so much for your research and help! I'm sure this will help users to use Hard Disk Sentinel with WinPE

Yes, exactly as you wrote: the main goal for Hard Disk Sentinel is to run in all possible cases, even in safe mode and/or when only limited environment available, without depending on WMI, without the need of .NET, C++ redistributable, VB/Java runtime environment etc...
For Hard Disk Sentinel, none of them required

[ginbot86]

HDS' ability to run in a minimal Windows environment like WinPE is definitely one of my favourite features. I have a USB drive with a WinPE setup of HDS, along with the DOS version for older PCs that can't run a WinPE environment without taking a long time to initialize.

Using that USB drive, I've saved a few friends' PCs before catastrophic data loss - one friend's HDD had thousands of bad sectors that he wasn't even aware of (he only noticed the HDD would 'freeze' for several seconds when accessing certain files)!

Thanks once again for making this excellent piece of software!

[B00ze]

Good day all.

Since I posted those small steps to get you started with WAIK (Windows 7 based PE) I have moved on to WinPE 5.1 (Windows 8.1 Update 1 based). And I found a package that makes Realtime performance data working fine (so HDS works 100% under WinPE). I think the package is WinPE-StorageWMI.cab; I am not sure that this package is available for WAIK but it is for ADK (WinPE5+). The commands for ADK are a little different than for WAIK, but not much...

Best Regards,

[spoonwzd]

Sorry to exhume this old post, but I'm not able to get HDS Pro 5.1 Portable to run in WinPE 5.1 - it just says it "is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running". I've set the path and scratchspace as detailed in this post, but it doesn't seem to help.

Any ideas?

[hdsentinel]

Do you use 32 or 64 bit of WinPE?

64 bit WinPE has limitation: it does not run 32 bit applications (which run perfectly under real, installed 64 bit Windows).
If this is the case, it would confirm why Hard Disk Sentinel (which is a 32 bit application) not started. Then yoU'd need to have a 32 bit WinPE.

[spoonwzd]

Meant to come back and say I'd worked it out - thanks again for your response it's working great.

[giorgio]

I found the procedure at post #5 to be quite complicated in order to obtain a WinPE that way.

Therefore:

1) I downloaded a ready-to-use WinPE x86 ISO at https://www.tenforums.com/software-apps ... -disk.html

2) Then I booted the burnt ISO (e.g. with ImageBurn or your favorite burner) from a DVD reader. You have to set your BIOS/UEFI ready to read the DVD first and be ready to press a key button at startup.
Please note that you could not see the Windows typical rotating/spinning circles animation during the DVD boot but actually the CD/DVD reader is loadiing the WinPE regularly.

3) When WinPE is loaded, I ran the HDSentinel Portable after coping the HDSData folder inside the HD Sentinel portable folder obtained after extracing the zip at https://www.harddisksentinel.com/hdsent ... rtable.zip.

4) Then I ran the surface tests I needed on my SSD.

5) Eventually I will create my own WinPE with this procedure:
https://www.tenforums.com/software-apps ... media.html, including all the software I regularly need, including my HDSentinel portable (I always use the portable edition anyway).

Hope this helps.

[kameniratnik]

Hello guys,

Can we somehow add hdd sentinel portable in WinPeSe x64 iso version?
I have WinPeSe x86 iso version and unfortunately I can't boot x86 version on my laptop because 64-bit CPU with UEFI support: Can boot x64 WinPE WIM/ISO UEFI but cannot boot x86 WinPE WIM/ISO UEFI.
Also, I have no option in bios for legacy boot. I added hdd Sentinel in my x64 WinPeSe iso image, but I can't run it because (like admin said) Hdd Sentinel is x86 app.

Thank you

[B00ze]

Yeah, by now most of the programs I put on my "Tools PE" have a x64 version, but I have to carry a x86 PE for HDS.
A x64 compiled version of HDS would be great! We know it will not improve performance,
but since the x86 subsystem is missing on x64 PE, we need a x64 HDS...
Thanks.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks, but because of compiler limitations, I'm afraid there are no plans to have x64 bit version of Hard Disk Sentinel.
Exactly because what you wrote: there will be absolutely no reason for that, it would not affect performance/functionality just would make everything more complicated.

Please note that there are x64 PE solutions (eg. Gandalf PE which I tested) where we can use x86 software too: Hard Disk Sentinel Pro Portable works by that like a charm