Read this article in Read this article in Introduction On the standard Windows operating system, pressing the Print-Screen key will copy an image of the entire screen to the clipboard, holding the Alt key and pressing the Print-Screen key will capture the currently selected window. Some Windows systems come with a screen capture utility pre-installed. Other operating systems may also offer a similar utility for screen capture. As an alternative to the utilities that come with the OS, the freeware products in this review cover most of the following useful features and functions which users might find they need:. Capture full screen or freely selected screen areas;.
Auto detect windows and control objects such as button, box, toolbar, tab, etc.;. Snap scrolling windows, allow delayed captures;. Auto adapt to screen settings, such as custom text size;. Re-size screen shots or create thumbnails and other extra features. This article's focus is on screen captures. If your priority is editing, after the capture, then check out Several of the editors listed also perform screen captures.
Rated Products. No full screen or active window capture. No delayed capture, auto-scroll, auto-save, or editor. No printer output. More Screen Capture Tools The following screen capture tools were brought up in comments here or noted from other sources.
Some tools don't properly handle the text size setting thereby effectively cropping 225% of the screen with a 150% text screen setting. They may work fine if your text setting is normal (100%). To be reviewed: SnapCrab: Related Products and Links You might want to check out these articles too:. Editor This software category is in need of an editor.
If you would like to give something back to the freeware community by taking it over, check out for more details. You can then contact us from that page. Please rate this article.
FastStone Capture is the best if you want a lightweight, very functional, easy to use screen capture and editor. I don't think a lot of people actually take the time to really test these programs before they review them. Believe me, it's the best because I've tried them all extensively. It's also available in a portable version. It's the only program that works consistently with scrolling windows from every application I've tried. Check out the edited in the editor.
That is so valuable. Even the edited is pretty decent for doing a quick demo. Commercial reference and features removed as per site rules. or to post comments. Hello, When available, I generally use the portable version of an application (one reason being that it will not, with very few exceptions, write to the Registry).
It turns out that there is a portable version of ScreenshotCaptor (which I have been successfully using on different Windows boxes, both Win 7 x64 & XP x32, for quite some time). As I almost always download from either Softpedia or Major Geeks, here is the link to the former:. Opening the folder that the 'installer' creates, one can pin the app's launcher to the Start Menu and / or send a shortcut to the Desktop. Hope this works for you. Regards, AJ. or to post comments. Looking for a screen capture that specifically has a couple features / behaviors.
1) When adding multiple text boxes on one screen, it (can) remember the last selection whether to use 'solid fill' on the text box background. Without having to re-select 'solid fill'(color) - every time. 2) At least on the same screen, it can remember the last text box background color used &.not.
make you re-select a background color each time (assuming you don't want to use white). 3) For basic drawing / annotating / text boxes, the prgm will allow going back & editing.most. objects - at least if the screen (file) hasn't been saved & closed. Certain capture proggies, if you even leave the separate 'drawing' mode (but the file's still open), there's no editing anything. Like Faststone Viewer - once you click OK in 'Draw Board,' (opens a separate screen), NO more editing objects. 4) Better if it's not super complicated prgm (just to add simple text boxes, arrows, etc.) Screenshot Captor may? Do most on my list, but for fairly simple annotation, it's way overkill & I don't find it intuitive (on many things).
I used a bunch. I liked PicPick in the past, but it won't do the # 1 & 2 above (not sure if past versions did). It's time wasting - reselecting the same text editor options you've used every time. or to post comments. Are you the editor?
If not, I think such editorial comments should be left to a proper editor. The difference between 'addons / extensions', apps, and programs is becoming increasingly blurred, and artificial, given cross-platform / cross-OS tools, esp.
Like Nimbus; especially where such cross-platform tools can be converted by users to run on different OSes and change from one 'form' to another, through something like Chrome APK packager - are such Windows 8 'apps' apps, or programs? Precisely where such material 'should' be included remains to be decided imho.
or to post comments. I am not the editor, but am a moderator, and also editor of other articles. So, as a team member, I know how this site works. You will understand that if we start bundling apps, extensions, and everything into one category, it will be increasingly difficult to handle the reviews, specially when there are so many programs in one category, such as this one. You can already see the long list. It's because of these reasons that we have separate categories for Android, Linux, Mac, and even Firefox add-ons.
Keeping them separate makes it easier for editors, as well as for users, as things are organized. or to post comments. We are open to suggestions regarding this:). You yourself can contribute useful suggestions how to handle this. One way is by posting Hot Finds items, which is done on a daily basis.
We have a Firefox add-on category too, where you can contribute this suggestion of yours. Which other materials are there, which this site has failed to list?
Please open a thread here on this issue: where you can offer suggestions, criticisms, or open up issues for discussion. Let's do this in a constructive way. And I didn't say your suggestion wasn't useful, didn't say that at all. I am sure many will find such a suggestion useful, who want to capture webpages without the use of a software that they have to fire up. I just said that it's not in the right place. Suggestions are always welcome. You can post about such suggestions in forum too, in appropriate category, like this suggestion of yours could be posted here:.
or to post comments. When others suggest other programs (or in this case extensions), I am tempted to ask - 'Why is that better than PicPick?' I was an Analyst in IT for 20 years, and I cannot fault it. It is easy to capture anything.
It has TABS (brilliant feature) You can annotate. And I just tested it on a web page, and it scrolled to capture the whole web page. I reckon that PicPick should be the benchmark for which we compare other contenders, and the proposer might elaborate on why their contender is better?
My 2 cents, Rob PS I was not happy when they 'fan boy' followed MS with a flippin Ribbon. But that can be toggled via the little down arrow head. or to post comments. You are putting your individual preference forward here. While you may find PicPick as the best and go-to program for screen capture, others may not.
Others may prefer some other program like DuckCapture, or Screenshot Captor over PicPick, and ask other programs to be compared to them. Different people like different software, and therefore, there are so many software out there. You can't just ask others to compare every suggestion they make to PicPick, or other software.
That's unfair, and I might add, a bit ridiculous. For comparison, we have the reviews, which people can read, and form their own opinion, and choose their own software. or to post comments. Actually, if you re-read my post you won't see me saying it's better than anything, just that it's new, has had good reviews. In fact, I've 'just installed' (in last hour) a couple of different ones, 'for a look', and discovered an email from Everhelper.me in my inbox - bit disturbing, I hadn't as far as I know done anything with anything - so, as with any freeware, be careful. To be honest, I hadn't heard of (or couldn't remember) PicPick, thanks for the pointer - actually, what are you doing even mentioning PicPick here - just checked, it doesn't seem 'free'. or to post comments.
Yes definitely free (for non commercial use) I would get it from portable apps or Softpedia - It has a lot of updates, so you get prompts to upgrade it. I have had a couple of warnings, when accepting the upgrade download link, so I would use Softpedia myself. (make sure you don't get fooled into clicking the download AVG link) (Even Softpedia can fool the elderly and the feeble minded, so I have to be doubly careful) Rob PS I went to PicPick Home page from their about box That page mentions that it is free And I used their download without warnings. The EXE is identical in size to the Softpedia EXE and Avast scanned it OK My free Malwarebytes was a bit out of date, and scanned it OK I am updating it, and will yell out if the next scan has problems. or to post comments. I have just tried Jing, bit disappointed because after the install I had to 'log in' to the program to be able to use it which meant signing up for ANOTHER account on another website, more usernames and passwords to remember, there isnt even an option to try the program without 'logging in'. Needless to say I have quit the application without signing up and logging in and have uninstalled the program, a bit of a waste of time so wanted to let everyone else know its not very good.
or to post comments Pages.
Contents of this article. In my last post, I explained how you can.
Today, I will show you how to add your own tools to your USB drive and launch them conveniently after you boot Windows PE. Most descriptions on the web will recommend mounting the wim file with imageX and then copying your tools to the Windows PE installation before creating your boot media. Although this makes sense for a rescue DVD, I wouldn't recommend this procedure for a thumb drive. It is just too cumbersome to create your Windows PE installation from scratch whenever you want to add a new tool.
Windows PE automatically mounts your USB drive. Therefore, you can simply copy all your tools to your thumb drive in a separate folder that is independent from Windows PE. Its advantage is that you can update your tools or add new ones without starting from scratch every time. However, with this procedure, you always have to find the drive letter of your USB stick first, and then navigate to the tool you want to launch on the command prompt. Real Windows geeks want more convenience. In the following three steps, you will learn how to configure your bootable USB drive with your own rescue tools.
Steps 1 and 2 have to be performed only once. Step 3 is for adding new tools to your USB drive and has to be followed every time you add new tools. Install and configure PStart Since Windows PE doesn't have a graphical user interface like Windows, you have to launch your tools from the command prompt, which is much too inconvenient for stressed admins. This is why I have created this simple solution so you can easily launch your tools from a GUI. For this purpose, I will use the free tool a while back. When the installation wizard of PStart asks you about the setup type, you should choose Portable Setup (see screenshot). Select your USB drive and tell the wizard to copy PStart to the root folder.
Next, you can launch PStart from your USB drive with Windows Explorer. To try this procedure, you can copy the to your USB drive. I recommend creating a special folder for all of your tools. Then, navigate to the Q-Dir folder and drag Q-Dir's exe file to the PStart window. You should see now a new menu point (see screenshot). You can now exit PStart.
Launch PStart automatically when WinPE boots up In the next step, we have to make sure that PStart will automatically launch when you boot up Windows PE. For this, you have to mount the wim file on your USB stick with imageX. ImageX belongs to WAIK, which you already downloaded and installed in. Launch the Deployment Tools Command Prompt from the Windows Start Menu and type. Imagex / unmount / commit c: img That's it.
You can now boot Windows PE from your USB stick. PStart should be automatically launched and you can then run Q-Dir from PStart's GUI with just a mouse click.
Add your own rescue tools If you want to add additional tools, you only have to copy them to the tools folder of your USB drive and add them to PStart by dragging their exe files to its GUI. You can do this on your Windows 7 machine like I described in my example with Q-Dir. Thus, adding a new tool to your rescue stick will only costs you a couple of seconds once your USB drive is bootable. That is, in the future only step 3 is required.
No more messing with imageX. Note that not every portable app works under Windows PE 3.0. And, which I reviewed this week, work fine. If you know of other good tools that work with Windows PE, please post a comment below or send me a. I have created a new category in the for. This sounds as if something went wrong when you copied the batch script. Please make sure that you only added two lines to startnet.cmd.
The first one ends with 'set w=%%p' and the second starts with 'w=%%p'. It is also possible that you are using a different folder name for PStart.
There has to be a folder in the root directory of your USB drive named 'PStart', otherwise the batch script can't find the location of PStart. You also have to ensure that there are no other drives with such a folder in the root directory. Hello Michael Thanks a lot for your short and easy description.
I am writing because I get an error with the script you use for finding the USB drive letter. It has problems with checking my floppy disc drive without a floppy in it. I have written my own workaround and want to give it to you. The drive letter of the USB disc you are booting from is written in the registry under HKLM SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Control with the name PEBootRamdiskSourceDrive. I use this information for starting the PStart.exe. Here is my script (all in one line): for /f 'eol=! Tokens=3'%%d in ('reg query hklm system currentcontrolset control /v PEBootRamdiskSourceDrive') do%%dPStart.exe Greetings from Germany Ralf.
Hello and thank you for sharing your knowledge. I ran into a stop right here “Now launch Notepad with admin privileges (right-click and select 'Run as administrator') and then open.' I'm stuck right here at the note pad deal. In my head it doesn’t really say what to do. Copy the stuff below this line into note pad? “Add these lines to startnet.cmd after the wpeinit command.” I don’t have any thing called wpeinit.
Snipping Tool
Where did it come from and where is it? It just seems to show up after it tells you to open note pad. Then near the end it says this? “Save startnet.cmd and then issue this command” So, are we back at deployment tool command prompt?
I did get my usb drive to boot ok, I thought I was really styling until I got to the notepad thing. FYI: I don’t know squat about batch files. Maybe I’m trying too hard. I’m just not getting it.
![Winpe Screenshot Tool Winpe Screenshot Tool](/uploads/1/2/3/8/123812374/381651886.png)
I would be thankful for any suggestions. Thanks, Bill GOD Bless America. Hello, I’ve made some headway. All seem to go as it should, but when I boot it up it leaves me at a command window with this: (x: windows system32wpeint) then it rolls one more line to this: (x: windows system32wpeint) Where am I going wrong? Also, part two post nine it is says: “Please make sure that you only added two lines to startnet.cmd. The first one ends with “set w=%%p” and the second starts with “w=%%p”. It is also possible that you are using a different folder name for PStart.
There has to be a folder in the root directory of your USB drive named “PStart”,” Does this mean ditch the echo part? Thanks, Bill God Bless America. Hello, Thanks for the reply. I thought I had figured it out, but no joy.
I did post again, but my post seems to have vanished. My last post basically said that all seems to go as planned, but it just won’t work. I am newbie tech learning as I go. I love the tool and think I would use it a lot. It may even make my IT brother-in-law say wholly crap, that’s awesome! I’m really hoping I can figure it out. Here is where I’m at now.
It looks like it’s going to boot to a desktop type GUI screen and then a command prompt window pops up and leaves me here. (x:windows system32wpeint) Then it scrolls one more line that says. (x:windows system32) and that’s where things come to a halt. Is this the point where it would launch the Q-Dir program which is responsible for the GUI interface? That’s where I’m at now. Obviously I’m missing some detail, but I am failing to figure out what it is.
Oh, and by the way I love the forums. So very much to gain from them. My apologies for being such a pain. Thank you for your time and effort.
Bill God Bless America. Hello again, Sorry to be Mr.
I can now boot to my USB drive and at the command prompt that pops up I can run the Pstart.exe and get to my added programs and run them. So at this point, I would say there is something I’m doing wrong with the auto run setup.
I have been doing a copy past for the notepad entry’s as I’m not that comfortable at the command line. So then my question would be. Is or can you check to make sure that what is posted is correct? If it is, does anyone have any suggestions? Bill God Bless America.
Michael, this is awesome! Thank you very much, everything worked perfect, even though I followed the instructions blindly without really understanding what I am doing. You made it really clear. Now I have my pen-drive with the tools, which I have been using for a while. BUT.I have a computer with an AMD RAID that I need to access.and W7 does not have the driver by deafault.
Do you know how I could do to add the Raid driver to the WPE pen drive I created following your instructions? (the driver is 3 files, a.info a.sys and a.cat Thank you very much! Gonzalo from Argentina. Hi, I have problem starting the script for selecting the flash drive.The usb boots and shows the cmd-startnet.cmd but when it should find the drive, there is nothing happening.In the posts there is a thing that i can't figure out.Above, you have the script shown and in post 9 you tell us that the line has to be in two parts, ending and beginning with 'w=%%p'.This is very confusing. If this is the right way, why don't you change the code?
When i do this in two lines, the second one is not executed.When i put w=%%p in front of the second line i having error 'w is not recognised'. I don't get it.It looks a nice tool to me and i can sure us it to make images.To see what the usb drive was doing, i disabled echo and i can see the lines where he looks for the right drive but PStart is not booting at all.PStart is at PStart PStart.exe Can you help me out here.
I set up my USB stick according to your instructions and was able to boot winpe without any problems.At first glance it looked good: I had the grey winpe-GUI in front of me and the typical DOS-window.Unfortunately PSTart would not appear-the reason: I do not have access to the bootable winpe-USBstick - the drive itself is not available!I tried several 'letters'(in the DOSbox) starting with 'c:' which is the win7-system reserved partition.' D:' not a valid filesystem.' E:' turns out to be my original c-drive and f: is another memory card.but there is absolutely no letter available for my winpe-drive.I checked the contents of every drive with 'dir' but no luck.Strange! It gets even more strange when I boot normally into Win7 (with the USBstick still connected)and Win7 will not recognize the USBstick-error message 'unknown device'.But removing the USBstick and inserting it again causes no problem and I have full access to the drive.any idea?
Sorry about my english-my native language is german. First of all: it works.My USB stick is fine.The trouble with my system is,if I boot an operating system from the USBstick,the bootet system will then recognize all connected devices like hdd,additional USBsticks etc BUT not the USBstick I bootet from.It also happens with Linux as I realized yesterday.Solution:disconnect and re-insert while Win7PE is running,then I can browse manually to my PSTart folder.This worked fine with Win7PE(I guess it's completely in RAM) but caused 'minor'trouble with Linux. It seems to me I am the only one with that problem - I am going to check my USB stick on a 'not-Dell' system.
Thanks a ton for the write-up, very helpful so far. But I am having the same issue as others. When I boot the USB drive it works just fine except PStart does not start. A cmd window opens and I see the contents of the startnet.cmd file and everything looks fine but no PStart. I have PStart.exe on the root of the USB drive. Any idea where the extra spaces are in the command that Pettson on reply 10 mentions?
When I try to run the full command from cmd window I get the message '%%p was unexpected at this time' From changing the command a few times its talking about the very first%%p, after for. Not sure if this is a valid test of anything or even what this variable does so not sure what to change it to. Like HaPe mentions, I am able to dir the X: drive but there is only a limited amount of folders, Program Files, Users and Windows. Nothing else. I cant see x: pstartexe or the tools folder I created. I am using Win7 32bit.
And have tried with 3 different usb sticks I was also having problems from Deployment Tools Command Prompt when messing around. I would get the error “Error: 0xc1420127″: The specified image in the specified wim is already mounted for read/write access. When unmount doesn’t work. Try this command: DISM /cleanup-wim Also make sure you don't have any windows open to the c: img directory when running the unmount. If the directory stays around and you still get the error above, delete the dir manual and remove it from the recycle bin Going to try RocketDock.
@ Steve Hey man, I saw that you were having problems with PStart not automatically loading. I noticed that you said that you Installed the it in the root of your flash drive. Michael recommended that we create folders for every program that we installed on our flash drives. If you copied the script word for word into that startnet. Then it is looking for the.exe file located within the folder. So in other words if you create a new folder and name it PStart, and then move PStart.exe inside of it than you should be set. Good luck bro!
I am trying to run the command from a cmd line after the system has booted to see if it gives me any information and here is what I see You have to change the variables from%% to just a single% to run it from cmd line The usb gets assigned to the E: drive in this example so I am only including that line. So here is the output if exist e: Pstart set w=e%w: Pstart Pstart.exe: PStart Pstart.exe if I change%w% to%w I get if exist e: Pstart set w=e%w: Pstart Pstart.exe So it seems like the issue is with the variable w not being replaced with the correct value, e in this case Sorry if this is rambling. This article was helpful to me, thanks.
Gave me a few ideas. Something I found useful is the ability to set a custom shell when WinPE starts up instead of messing with the startnet.cmd file to add a program like PStart to launch: Winpeshl.ini controls whether a customized shell is loaded in Windows PE instead of the default Command Prompt window. To load a customized shell, create a file named Winpeshl.ini and place it in%SYSTEMROOT% System32 of your customized Windows PE image. The.ini file must have the following section and entry.
LaunchApp AppPath =%SYSTEMDRIVE% myshell.exe LaunchApps%SYSTEMDRIVE% mydir application1.exe, -option1 -option2 application2.exe, -option1 -option2 This is also handy because the default shell is the command prompt window, and if you close it you get a reboot. Instead, with this method, your launcher is your shell and closing it will reboot (handy with RocketDock, as it's harder to accidentally close).
To adapt this for ease of use with a flash drive and being able to add other apps without redoing your WIM each time, you can still make the edit to startnet.cmd to identify the flash drive's letter (the 'for%%p in (a b c d.' Line) in the article, and then use the resulting variable instead of%SYSTEMDRIVE% (%w% instead, i.e.%w%: PStart Pstart.exe as your shell). I followed your instructions to create a Win PE 3.0 bootable USB thumb drive with PStart called from the startnet.cmd file during startup. From PStart I use ghost32.exe v11.5.1 to backup and restore laptop drives and I've done several backups/restores without any problems.
I've done this on Win7 and WinVista. Today I ran into a problem trying to backup my Mom's new HP Pavilion dv6. I figured this might be because the new laptop was running Win7 SP1 code base (WinPE 3.1) rather than just the standard Win7 code base (WinPE 3.0). So I downloaded the WAIK supplment for Win7 SP1 and followed the same instructions to create a new bootable USB thumb drive using the PE 3.1 environment and I get the same results. In both cases, when the thumb drive is plugged into her computer, it boots, then runs the 'wininit' (startnet.cmd) but then fails to call PStart.exe. This seems to be a problem with the script determining the drive letter of the USB key, however if I use the exact same key in my Mom's netbnook PC, PStart launches just fine.
In fact, I'm backing up her PC as we type this. I'm at a loss as to why PStart doesn't launch and I really want to back up her new laptop before it gets all jacked up. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. By the way, after reading through the entire thread, it appears I'm experiencing the same problem as described in posts 60-66 and 68 above. Again, I also think PStart doesn't seem to work in a 64-bit environment. Would really like to have a solution to this. The problem is as stated above: even though you boot from the USB drive, no drive letter is assigned to the USB drive after boot.
In fact, using your startnet.cmd script, you are setting the environment variable called 'w'. If you type 'set' at the X: windows system32 prompt after boot, you will in fact see that no variable 'w' has been set, even after the script runs (validated by removing '@echo off' from beginning of script). For now I guess I'll have to resort to adding tools through imagex, though the PStart method is preferred so that we don't have to go through that hassle for adding new tools. Thanks again for your work on this, hopefully we can find a resolution soon.
Thanks for this Michael - very useful I have a problem that does not appear to have been covered above. If I leave 'startnet.cmd' unchanged with just the 'wpeinit' command then when I boot then wpeinit runs to completion and leaves me with a useable command prompt at 'x: windows system32'. All as expected.
When I add your lines to run PStart that part works and PStart is automatically started on boot, but wpeinit hangs and never reaches the command prompt. Any ideas why this is happening and how to allow wpeinit to complete as well as getting PStart running as well? No, I cannot find the USB drive manually. I checked every single drive letter. When a drive letter 'registered', I did a 'DIR' to validate contents of the drive.
The USB plain old is not available. Even though WinPE boots from the same USB, the USB itself is not assigned a drive letter after WinPE boots and therefore is not available to run programs from. This seems to be the same on a couple of new Win7 laptops I tried it on. But if I take the same USB and use it on another Win7 laptop, it works just fine (no changes to startnet.cmd or anything else). Michael, thanks for the great advice but unfortunately I have an issue that is a bit more complicated.
I'm working on a Motion Computing CL 900 tablet where the user entered a password using the touch screen and (must have) entered it incorrectly (no way of telling where he messed up). This was his tablet and he was the admin on it with no other admin accounts enabled. The CL 900 has one USB interface but if you use the bootable USB stick, you cannot then swap over to the USB keyboard and as far as I can tell, the touch screen interface is disabled in Win PE.
I was intending to use NTPWEdit but I can't do anything in Win PE without the keyboard. Is there some way run a script that will execute NTPWEdit? I have looked to see if others have had success loading the touch screen drivers using Win PE and it sounds like the answer is no. Michael, thanks for the pointer, but in this case the admin account is NOT enabled on this tablet. There is just a single account (the user's) which has admin privileges (this was his tablet, I'm just trying to help him out).
I didn't think the Sticky Keys would work for a user admin account, only the Win admin account. Am I incorrect? I should have mentioned I followed your write-ups to create a bootable USB stick with Win PE installed (and NTPWEdit among other tools). I have thought about the USB hub but was worried it wouldn't work while trying to boot from that same hub.
Michael, This information has been incredibly helpful. In one day I have learned more about Bootable drives and configurations that I have in the last several years. I have come screeching halt, however, and require some assistance.
I have gone through all of your steps, from prepping the Bootable USB, to everything on this page up to getting PStart onto the drive. I found the hidden space right here; PStart set w=%%p%w%: PStart PStart.exe (even before that I had just copy pasted what you had in the line directly in without changing it) The line I did change is the Pstart Pstart.exe to just PStart.exe because I didn't make an independent folder.
Could that be the issue? Here is what happens; the grey background screen loads along with the command prompt and it says the following X: windows system32wpeinit X: windows system32 That's it.
That is where I am stuck. Like I said I have started over from scratch mutliple times, and redone everything manually etc.PLEASE help me, this project is very important to me and the knowledge you have put on this site is incredible! Thank you for doing everything so far, and thank you for your time. This article was a GREAT find! Brian Checkout this command script I created based on this article. Just edit startnet.cmd and add this line: REM Start menu @echo off for%%p in (c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z) do if exist%%p: utils set w=%%p%w%: utils menu.cmd Then create a directory named utils and add these lines and save it to the root of the utils directory: ECHO OFF CLS:MENU ECHO. ECHO.Please select which image to deploy, or x to EXIT.
ECHO 1 - Secure Erase hard drive ECHO 2 - Utility Apps Menu ECHO x - Exit and restart ECHO. I made two adjustments to the member point system: Posting a blog comment: 20 points (before 10 points) Liking content: 2 points (maximum 6 points per day) (before 1 point) You can currently get 20 points for a reply in the forum and I think a blog comment has essentially the same value because it usually is a reply to a reader question. I think the two points for a like are justified because we have a few ways to receive 1 point for activities with lesser value for the community such as visiting a page. The complete list of all activities with their points is. Let me know what you think and if other adjustments are necessary. I should mention that posts in the community forum are also rewarded with points.
Earlier today I needed to take a snapshot of the screen while doing a deployment in the WinPE phase. This was on a physical machine, so either I had the option of hooking up a screen capture hardware (Epiphan DVI2USB3), or, simply use the little known screenshot feature in ZoomIt.
Win Pe Screenshot
Extract the x64 version of ZoomIt First, since I was using a x64 WinPE, and the Zoomit main program is x86, which x64 WinPE can’t run, I needed to extract the x64 version of ZoomIt from the x86 version (which contains both x86 and x64 version. To do that, simply start ZoomIt on a x64 Windows, and make a copy of the ZoomItx64.exe that is extraced in the same folder.
Take a screenshot using ZoomIt Now, when you have ZoomIt x64 version, you can simply run it in WinPE x64. If you want to avoid the licensing prompt, you can create the following registry key: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Sysinternals ZoomIt 'EulaAccepted'=dword:00000001 Then to do a screenshot, press Ctrl+2 to activate ZoomIt without zooming. Then press Ctrl+S to save the screen to a location that you specify. Here is the resulting snapshot from a Dell Latitude E7440 Happy Deployment / Johan Happy deployment, and thanks for reading!. Meet the team behind this web site:. For any questions / comments to this post, use our Facebook page:. Also, please subscribe to the Deployment Artist YouTube channel: What our lawyers makes us say: This information is provided 'AS IS' with no warranties, confers no rights and is not supported by the authors or Deployment Artist.
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Troubleshooting SCCM Operating System Deployments can be tough, to ease the pain you can enable the command support console for use within the Windows Preinstallation Environment. Doing so will give you access to the command prompt, the SMSTS.log and the ability to launch various other applications to aid in troubleshooting. I will show you how to enable the console, then give a couple of examples. Enabling Command Support Console (F8) 1. Open the System Center Configuration Manager Console. Browse to Software Library - Operating Systems - Boot Images and select the boot image you would like to add command support to.
Right Click the boot image and select properties. Head to the Customization Tab and tick “Enable command support (testing only)”. You will then be prompted with “You have made changes that require you to update distribution points with a new version of this package – Do you want ConfigMgr to update the distribution points now?”.
Work will then be done on the Boot.wim, which will in turn be re-distributed. Current size of the boot.wim without any additional drivers added is around 160MB so distribution shouldn’t take too long- even with slow links. Next, next until the process is completed. Once the updated boot.wim has been distributed, PXE boot into WinPE.
You will now be able to access the command prompt by pressing F8. Open the SMSTS.log The SMSTS.log is the main log file for diagnosing OSD and Task Sequences client side. The location of this file changes through various steps of the task sequence. WinPE Before HDD is formatted: x: windows temp smstslog smsts.log WinPE After HDD is formatted: x: smstslog smsts.log Windows, SCCM agent not installed: c: SMSTaskSequence Logs Smstslog smsts.log Windows, SCCM agent installed: c: windows system32 ccm logs Smstslog smsts.log Windows x64, SCCM agent installed: c: windows sysWOW64 ccm logs Smstslog smsts.log 1. Press F8 when in the WinPE environment to open the command prompt. You can view the SMSTS.log file on the live system, or move it to another machine to interrogate.
To open the SMSTS.log type notepad X: Windows Temp SMSTS SMSTS.log (in this case this is the SMSTS.log prior to formatting the HDD). At this stage you can also plug in a USB drive and copy/save the log onto it. Taking a screenshot It can be useful to have the ability to take screenshots from within WinPE.
To do so, you can map a drive (or use a USB stick) and use a utility called nircmd. Here we map a drive with net use j: server share password /user:user then run nircmd from the mapped drive. Savescreenshotwin will only capture the command prompt window, whereas savescreenshotfull will capture the entire environment (probably more useful). Hopefully this post will have improved your ability to troubleshoot OSD and task sequence issues, and open up the possibility of running other applications (e.g. Process monitor) from within WinPE.
It is known that Windows provides the function to create a Windows Recovery tool, but it only contains a set of tools as mentioned before. And you are unable to add any custom tools in it.
On the other hand, there almost no Windows PE tools support adding any custom tools or even it support, it may also be very complex to do so. Consider this situation, provides the 'add custom tools' feature, you can use it to add the portable tools you want. Please take a look at the picture below, in the lower left corner, you will find the 'Add Files' button. This option is used to add the portable tools to Windows PE. As you know, portable tools are usually a single exe file or a folder with necessary files.
After click 'Add Files', please refer to the following screenshot to add files or folders and read the note information. Note:. To added tools work properly, we suggest you adding the 32bit version of the tools if your Windows is 32bit system.
Of course, you need to add the 64bit version of the tools if your Windows is 64bit system. We suggest you running AOMEI PE Builder on a 32bit system, and adding 32bit tools during making Windows PE, and then you can use the generated out of Windows PE to work on any computer.