BartPE Software Review

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A review of BartPE and PE Builder

Copyright
Copyright (c) 2000-2007 by Nu2 Productions. All rights reserved.

What is BartPE and PE Builder?

Bart'sPE Builder helps you build a BartPE (Bart Preinstalled Environment) bootable Windows CD-Rom or DVD from the original Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 installation/setup CD, very suitable for PC maintenance tasks.

It will give you a complete Win32 environment with network support, a graphical user interface (800x600) and FAT/NTFS/CDFS filesystem support. Very handy for burn-in testing systems with no OS, rescuing files to a network share, virus scan and so on.
This will replace any Dos bootdisk in no time

Introduction
PE Builder is not a Microsoft product and does not create Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). Using PE Builder does not grant you a license to Microsoft Windows PE or to use the Windows XP or Server 2003 binaries in a manner other than stated in the End-User License Agreement included in your version of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has not reviewed or tested PE Builder and does not endorse its use.

Please do not contact Microsoft for support on the preinstallation environment that has been created by PE Builder!
Microsoft does not provide support for PE Builder or for the preinstallation environment created by PE Builder.

The PE Builder program (pebuilder.exe) runs on Windows 2000/XP/2003/BartPE. It does not run on Windows NT4/ME/9x.

To avoid any confusion, the bootable CD generated by PE Builder should be called by its nickname BartPE!

Because Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom has decided that the new 'Recovery Console' in Vista and Windows Server 2008 are more than adequate [chough, chough!] it has discontinued support and selling ERD Commander.

I have used BartPE for some years, I originally found Nu2 about seven years ago when I was looking [research!] for some obscure drivers for a network card that someone in their option decided to throw away the driver support disk.

From making boot floppies to making a recovery CD Nu2 has done an excellent job. I have build all versions of the BartPE boot CD's. I carry them when I go out on jobs. I have even converted one version to a bootable USB flash drive, now that will save your pocket!

With ERD Commander you have to know how to modify an ISO image to insert programs you want on the CD, with Bart's PE Builder you can add the programs, tools, or utilities prior to building the boot CD.

The only drawback to creating your own bootable CD with Bart's PE Builder is that you have to know what drivers to add to the CD, in other words you have to know your target hardware. The PE Builder does have a lot of generic drivers for USB, SCSI Drives, RAID Array, and other support.

If you are going to use BartPE for your TS Toolbox I suggest you use rewriteable cd's until you have the build process down and a good tested cd.

Rating:

I am rating this 9 out of 10, why 9 of 10? Because this is not a buy it and run it type of deal. You need to build your CD and you need to know what hardware you are going to build the CD for. Using the generic drivers may or MAY NOT work for your environment.

Here is the web page to get you started: Bart's Preinstalled Environment
(BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

Here is a tutorial on BartPE.

Do It yourself Computer Repair E-Book

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