Bdtyktl

As mentioned here and here, bootrec.exe and bcdedit.exe have trouble functioning from a usb-booted WinPE environment. They tend to see the wrong sets of files and they also tend to break things (which I found out the hard way). As of yet, I have found no way to get them to see any file set other than that from which they were booted, IE not the WinPE environment. Booted from an actual disk, they work fine. It seems to be an issue with usb drivers in windows PE & RE from what little I was able to find. I have also tried gandalf50's (awesome) PE4 disk (found at http://windowsmatters.com/2014/05/15/standalone-win8-1update_pe-x64-or-x86-2/) with the same results.

I am a technician, though I still view myself as a novice. But I have built my own PE disks in the past and its not difficult at all. Why then does it seem impossible to get the functionality of these very necessary repair tools when the PE is booted via usb? I have found nowhere that describes a fix or any success stories or even anyone who has even attempted to get this to work. Personally, I run all my bootable tools from a single 250gb usb drive (setup with winsetupfromusb) and I greatly enjoy not being tethered to a CD/DVD binder anymore. Any help or knowledge on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: The bcdedit export operation fails. windows vista not booting The last post here contains a plausible fix. However, it requires that EasyBCD's iso caching method be used. I could re-do my huge drive with approx 30 bootable tools and this would work but its really a workaround in my mind. A creative solution regardless.

This has been driving me crazy not having these in WinPE, not sure if this is published elsewhere but this is what seemed to work for me:

1. Make sure you have a Windows Recovery/Installer CD that's the same bitness (x86/x64) as your WinPE image. If you don't, run the Windows Installer Creator to create a USB installer (I had to do this since my WinPE is x86).


2. 
   

   Once you have the USB installer, look for sourcesboot.wim. Copy this file somewhere, and then mount it with dism to view the contents:

   
   
   

   dism.exe /mount-wim /wimfile:c:pathtoboot.wim /mountdir:c:mount /index:1
   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   Next, find sourcesboot.wim on your WinPE drive, and copy that to a different location, and mount it to a separate directory with dism:

   
   
   

   dism.exe /mount-wim /wimfile:c:pathtowinpeboot.wim /mountdir:c:mount-winpe /index:1
   
   

   
   


4. 
   

   With both images mounted, copy these files/folders from the installer mount path (c:mount) to the mount path for WinPE (c:mount-winpe). The paths in WinSxs may look slightly differently, depending on what build of Windows you're running:

   
   
   
   
   
   • Windowssystem32bootrec.exe
   
   
   • Windowssystem32en-USbootrec.exe.mui
   
   
   • WindowsWinSxSx86_microsoft-windows-winre-tools.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.17763.1_en-us_150e215b68bd79cc
   
   
   • WindowsWinSxSx86_microsoft-windows-winre-tools_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.17763.1_none_5ea4ec160fde2af5
   
   
   
   



5. Commit the WinPE image with:
   dism.exe /unmount-wim /mountdir:c:mount-winpe /commit




6. Finally, copy the boot.wim back into the sources folder on the WinPE drive, then boot into WinPE and test that it's working with bootrec /? and bootrec /scanos.