Caution: Manual Work Ahead – Integrating the Drivers
In order to ensure that our Rescue CD supports a broad hardware base, we now create the folders Drivers, Files, Inf, and System in the Rescue-Disk\PEBuilder\plugin\xpe-1.0.7 directory. Now we need to copy various Windows XP files to these directories. To do so, open the files driver.cab and sp*.cab in the folder Rescue-Disk\XP-Source\I386. From these CAB archives, copy all files with the extension *.sys to the Drivers directory, and all files ending with *.exe and *.dll to the System directory inside the folder xpe-1.0.7. Please note that you first have to extract all files from the driver.cab before moving on to those from sp*.cab.
Next we have to copy several *inf files from the Windows i386 directory to the INF folder. Open a command line, navigate to the i386 directory of the Windows XP setup files and enter the command "expand -r *.in_ ..\..\PEBuilder\plugin\xpe-1.0.7\Inf". This will also unpack all files with the extensions *.inc, *.ins and *.ini, which you need to delete from the INF directory before continuing. Also, copy the files WPnp.exe and HWPnPDLL.dll from Rescue-Disk\PeBuilder\plugin\hwpnp1022\Files to Rescue-Disk\PEBuilder\plugin\xpe-1.0.7\System.If you also need other drivers for RAID, AHCI or network cards, cope these driver files to the appropriate directories in the way described above.
You now have to rename the file mkisofs.exe to mymkisofs.exe in Rescue-Disk\PEBuilder. Then extract the content of the folder Build Scripts found in the Zip-Archive Rescue-Disk\Tools\BuildScripts-20050322.zip to the directory Rescue-Disk\PEBuilder. If you’re using Windows Vista, replace the file InfDataBuild.exe in the PEBuilder directory with the InfCacheBuild 2.0.0. and extract the file SETUPAPI.DL_ in the i386 directory to the PEBuilder folder by using he expand –r command on the command line. Still with us? Good, ‘cause there’s more…
Start the PEBuilder.exe application. Select whether you want to burn the image directly to disc and click “Build”, then confirm your selection in the following dialog box. This replaces our previous BartPE ISO image. This time, the build process will take a little longer, since PEBuilder will have to process more files. In the end, the image should weigh in at about 480 MB. When the process completes, restart your computer and boot from the newly created CD. The changes should be apparent immediately. After successfully starting your Windows XPE environment, launch the hardware detection from Programs->Systemtools in the Start Menu.
If a user is competent enough to build a rescue cd in the manor you suggest they would have no problem using a live Linux distribution to recover a pc. If you provided the recovery cd then that would be another matter.
Not bad article but just as a suggestion, why not try the UBCD4Windows, its another version of a bootable live CD running XP and it comes pre-setup with loads of drivers and software so you don't have the hassle of copying all those files from one place to another.
Also I like the XPE system to make it look like XP but cos it uses windows explorer it makes the whole thing bloated and takes ages to load (off CD).
But anyways, great article and keep up the great work.
I would have to agree with futile on this one. I have used my trusty Ubuntu Live CD on many occasions to recover data from un-bootable XP systems belonging to friends or family. And with the newest version, Ubuntu 7.10, it automatically mounts the windows partition so you dont even have to launch a terminal to change anything. Simple.