Running Bart-PE (PE-Builder)
From Microsoft RIS Server

As promised on my old Bart-PE on RIS page, now I have the newest* version of Bart-PE working from our corporate RIS server, I have updated this page to step y'all through exactly how I did it.

Thanks to the excellent driver packs created by Bashrat the Sneaky we should no longer need a special set of drivers for network adapters on MS RIS. Intel appear to have finally fixed the issue with drivers for text mode setup, and all Intel Pro 100/1000 NIC's now appear to work under RIS. I have discovered however, that I still need to use a plugin for text mode drivers for the Intel LOM Nics. The Bashrat packs can be integrated into your Bart-PE environment thanks to the sterling work undertaken by LittlBUGer which was until recently posted on the Ultimate Boot CD forum pages.
Please Note!
The UBCD4Win drivers method previously mentioned on this page is no longer valid, as there is now a new version of UBCD4Win. I am currently working on integrating this new version into Bart-PE. I will update this guide as soon as my experimentation is complete.

How to:

Preinstall Stage.

First things first download the latest version of Bart-PE. The version I have based this page on is 3.1.10a
Next download the BTS Driverpack integrator routine from this site, and any of the BTS Drivers Packs that you want to include. Bashrat has released a new Base driver pack which has not yet been tested with this method, so the last version of the old Base pack is included in the download. You will also need to download any driverpacks you choose to add. The sound driver pack is not currently supported by this method. I have chosen to include the chipset, Intel Extreme graphics, LAN, and mass storage driver packs.

PE-Builder Installation.

Start pebuilder3110a.exe (or whichever version you intend to use)
Select Your preferred language

Click OK;

At the welcome Screen Click Next;

Select your preferred location. (I normally install to c:\pe) Click Next;

Select or create a Start Menu group. (I usually select the default)

Choose whether or not to add a desktop icon. Click Next;

Click Install;

Click Finish.
Go to your download location and find the file named BTSDriver-Integration.EXE
Double-click this file.

Type the path to your PE-Builder installation e.g. C:\PE

Click OK
The required files will be copied to your %PE-Builder% and %PE-Builder%\plugin folders
Copy the BTS Driverpacks from your download location to the relevant %PE-Builder%\plugin\BTSDrivers folder. Bashrat has changed his naming convention for the driverpacks with the new release of his integrator. To use the driverpacks with this method you need to change the driverpack names back from DP_driverpack_name.7z to DriverPack_driverpack_name.7z
Installation is complete.

RIS Networking & Bart-PE

Many NIC manufacturers have drivers with RIS text mode issues. You receive a warning when you try to RIS build a machine, or run your Bart-PE environment which says:
"The operating system image you selected does not contain the necessary drivers for your network adapter. Try selecting a different operating system image. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator."
This has happened fairly frequently, and will continue until NIC manufacturers get their act together and produce decent drivers for their hardware, or until Microsoft produce a better mechanism for RIS. If you have this difficulty and don't fancy hacking drivers about as shown on section 79of this Broadcom page, you may want to download this archive (MD5 Hash: A1339CFF484F8C943845377737530715) of working text mode drivers. Just add them to your i386 folder then follow the usual steps to remove any .pnf files and restart the Remote Installation Service. You could also download the plugin (MD5 Hash: 9E129EEAAFCD4983B314175ED529A590) for Intel Nics, and build it into your Bart-PE iso.

I have discovered with my build that the Gianluigi Tiesi aka Sherpya XPE shell has networking issues with RIS. The shell launches, but is unable to initialise the network. One of the main reasons for me using the Bart-PE environment on RIS is system recovery/repair, which relies heavily on networking.
The problem appears to be related to Penetcfg Plug'nPray, which cannot seem to load the network drivers. I first thought that it was something to do with the switch from text mode to gui mode drivers, but now I am not so sure.
To work around this issue, I have gone back to an older version of penetcfg by Pierre Mounir aka TheTruth which does not appear to invoke PnP. The version I am using is 2.0.0.0 and so far I have had no problems with networking. This version can be found in older versions of PE-Builder, or you can download from here. You need to disable the "PENETCFG: PE Network configurator (theTruth)" and "PENETCFG: Automatically start PE Network configurator" plugins (or simply remove the penetcfg folder from your plugin folder) to use the older penetcfg plugin.
To initialise XPE as your shell, you will need to disable the Nu2Shell and Startup Group plugins. This action prevents the penetcfg plugin initialising the network. To rectify this, you need to make some changes to the z_xpe-custom.inf and xpe-defaults.inf files in the xpe plugin folder.
Important! Back-up the original xpe-defaults.inf in case of any mistakes.
Search for "Launching PeNetCfg"" penetcfg.exe" and uncomment the line.I also had to comment out the lines containing "net start DHCP" and "net start nla" to suppress errors.

Custom Plugins

You can now start to integrate your custom plugins. I have created some plugins of my own, which I find quite useful. There are also literally hundreds of plugins available on the 'net. Before running around trying to create your own, google for the plugin you want.

Using the XPE Shell

Sherpya's XPE shell plugin makes your Bart-PE environment look and feel more like Windows XP.
Download the plugin and extract it to your plugin folder. i.e. c:\pe\plugin
Rename the file z_xpe-custom.inf.sample z_xpe-custom.inf (this is where you can customise the shell.)
Find this line:
; Uncomment this line to use PeNetCfg - you need "Network Support [factory/netcfg/penetcfg]" plugin enabled,
; PeNetCfg version >= 2.20, and also REMOVE factory.exe and netcfg.exe or PeNetCfg will fail with this conf
;0x1,"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","000","||xpeinit.exe -m ""Launching PeNetCfg"" penetcfg.exe /UseProfile"
Remove the semi-colon at the beginning of line ';0x1,"Microsoft\Windows' to un-comment. This is required for networking.
Similarly, find and uncomment this section:
[Software.DelReg]
; Uncomment these lines if you are using PeNetCFG
"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","101"
"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","102"
"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","103"
"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","104"
"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","106"
"Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx\900","107"
I prefer to have the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, with no autohide. To make this change, find and uncomment the following section
; TaskBar on Bottom - No Autohide
0x3,"Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects2","Settings",\
28,00,00,00,ff,ff,ff,ff,02,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,3f,00,00,00,1e,00,00,00,fe,\
ff,ff,ff,e4,02,00,00,02,04,00,00,02,03,00,00
Don't forget to comment out the default settings if you do this.

Run PE-Builder

You can now compile your Bart-PE build. Run pebuilder.exe, and click 'I agree' if this is the first time you have run it. You will also need to point PE-Builder at your Windows XP source files. I keep the source on my HDD to save hunting for cd's each time I create a build.
Click the 'Plugins' button to open enable/disable plugins dialog.
Enable the custom plugins you have added.
Enable the penetcfg 2.0.0.0 plugin for networking in XPE shell.
Don't forget to enable the penetcfg 2.0.0.0 plugin and disable the "PENETCFG: PE Network configurator (theTruth)" and "PENETCFG: Automatically start PE Network configurator" plugins, the Nu2Shell plugin and the Startup Group plugin or the XPE shell will not work.
Close the plugins dialog when you have enabled and disabled the required plugins.
Click Build - Sit back and watch it happen. PE-Builder will call Autobuild.cmd, which integrates the driver packs. If this appears to fail, delete the Bartpe folder inside your PE-Builder folder (i.e. c:\pe\Bartpe) and run PE-Builder again.
When PE-Builder finishes, you are ready to copy your Bart-PE build to your RIS server.

Copy to RIS

In the past I have always followed this Microsoft document to the letter when creating my RIS Bart-PE distribution.
You need a flat Windows XP image on your RIS server; copy an existing Windows XP image to a new folder. (e.g. Bart-PE)
Copy the entire contents of your Bart-PE cd to this new folder, click to overwrite any files when prompted. If you use my RIS support plugin, your sif file etc. will be copied as part of the cd copy process. If not, you will need to manually edit the ristndrd.sif file.
You can then delete any files normally found in the root of your cd from the RIS folder, i.e. WIN51, WIN51IP,WIN51IP.SP2 as these are not required by RIS.
Search within the \Bart-PE\i386 folder for any .pnf files and delete them.
Restart the Remote Installation Service on your RIS server.

I have since discovered a much simpler method as our organisation uses only Intel nic's. You will need to manually add nic drivers for your specific cards, especially cards which normally work natively with RIS, using this method. If in doubt, use the 'official Microsoft' method.

1. Create a folder on the RIS server for your Bart-PE distribution (i.e. \\ris-servername\setup\english\images\Bart-PE)
2. Create the following folder structure inside the Bart-PE folder:

3. Copy the contents of the templates folder in your Windows XP distribution folder to your \Bart-PE\i386\templates folder. (If you use my ris-support plugin, you can skip steps 2,3,& 4.
4. Edit the Bart-PE\i386\templates\ristndrd.sif file to include the following:
[SetupData]
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint"
and something like...
[OSChooser]
Description ="Bart-PE Diagnostic Environment built by PE-Builder"
Help ="Remote Boot Windows® XP Bart-PE environment with tools. This does not format or install anything on the hard disk and may take some time to load."

5.Once you have tested your Bart-PE build on CD and are sure it works correctly, copy the entire cd contents to your Bart-PE RIS distribution folder. You can then delete any files normally found in the root of your cd from the RIS folder, i.e. WIN51, WIN51IP,WIN51IP.SP2 as these are not required by RIS.
6. Search within the \Bart-PE\i386 folder for any .pnf files and delete them.
7. Restart the Remote Installation Service on your RIS server.

Update!
Running Bart-PE on domain computers from a RIS server will destroy the Active Directory computer account, unless some changes are made.

You must have a Tools folder in your RIS structure, and the Maintenance & Troubleshooting menu must be enabled. (See this document if you don't know how.)
Your Bart-PE distribution must be stored in the \\Ris-server\Setup\English\Images folder. RIS is unable to parse the .sif file properly if it is stored in any other folder.
Change the ImageType =Flat in the .sif file to ImageType =WinPE
Restart the Remote Installation Service on your RIS server.
When you PXE boot your computer and log on to RIS, the Bart-PE environment will now appear in the Maintenance & Troubleshooting (Tools) menu.

Thanks to celilmalas from The CD Forum for pointing me in the right direction with the tools menu. Thanks to Jean-Francois Martel at Université Laval for pointing out the omission re. xpe-defaults.inf
Thanks to me ol' mucker Andy Woodman (AKA Fencer128 on MSFN) for pointing out that the UBCD4Win stuff had changed.
A big thank-you to Mark Chinery for pointing out errors in the UBCD4Win integrator (now fixed I think) and for sending some ideas on updating this page. (I will possibly get round to it sometime soon....... )