[syslinux] pxelinux and startrom.com

Thu May 18 16:41:18 PDT 2006

Chris,

There's two destinct ways to load WinPE. You need to decide which one to
use.

1) Via RIS/BINLSVC/TFTPD or a clone. 

Is significantly more complicated, but has lower overheads (boots
faster) and does offer the ability to load different WinPE images
without patching the startrom.com and ntldr files to load a different
winnt.sif. There are various quirks with RIS that may pose a challenge,
specifically network support is crippled. Ie DNS resolver doesn't not
work by standard and the inf parser deviated from the stardard, but
there are work arounds. For instance vendor NIC inf files are different
under RIS. Both Broadcom and Intel now have special inf files for RIS.
It can be a real PITA to get a RIS image working with wide NIC support,
especially with the Intel Pro 100 VM/VE adaptors.  

2) Use a RAM Disk image, either in ISO (RO ramdisk) or SDI (RW ramdisk)

Is slower to load, but offer better Networking and runs faster. You can
also have a WinPE image without network support under 70MB.

Option 2 requires using the Win2003 SP1 ramdisk.inf, ramdisk.sys,
ntldr(setupldr.exe), ntdetect.com and startrom.com(.0) for the Base
WinPE build. If you want to load multiple images then you need to patch
startrom and ntdlr to point to different winnt.sif for each WinPE image
you want to load from a pxelinux menu.

I use option 2 as it's simpler and I don't have to worry about specific
RIS/RAMDISK difference for WinPE boot images. I can just burn the same
RAMDISK ISO images to CD if a PC doesn't have PXE support, or not enough
RAM.

Rob

-----Original Message-----
Chris:

I would need some more details of how you are booting WinPE, but most
people seem to be using a clone of the BINLSVC on the TFTP/SMB server.
If this is the case you should be able to setup a AMD64 directory next
to your I386 directory on your file server. Startrom.com exists in the
arch specific directory so there should be no issue as the modified
version will only be used on x64 capable machines. Details on setting up
the .iso are here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304992&sd=tech#E
JABAAA

~joe

On 4/25/06, Baksa, Chris <cbaksa at lehman.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings Luis,
>
> I saw a thread about Startrom.com and startrom.o that had your name 
> attached...
> I was wondering if you had a moment to comment on an issue that I
have.
>
> I have a Linux server that is our corporate PXE server.  It is set up 
> in a logical folder structure so that a host can be pointed to boot a 
> variety of different OS's  (DOS, Linux loaders, Windows PE).  Here is 
> in my dilemma,
>
> I currently boot a 32 bit version of Windows PE.  BUT... I need to 
> support booting both a 32 and a 64 bit version.
> I can't seem to get the system to boot more than one.  Have you had 
> any experience doing this?
>
> To make matters worse... Microsoft has a new Startrom.com that I need 
> to use because it have a fix for AMD hosts and IBM Blades.
> I noticed you said something about renaming it startrom.0.  Will that 
> work?
>
> Lastly.. You mentioned a mailing in your post.  Looks like a 
> newsletter that may have covered some PXE details.  Might you forward
me a copy.
> It may just answer my questions or shed some light on my issue.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
>
> Chris Baksa
> Vice President
> Enterprise Technology Services
>
> Lehman Brothers
> 70 Hudson Street
> Jersey City, NJ 07302
> * 201.499.4861
> * cbaksa at lehman.com
>
>
>
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