Hello All,
Are there any plans to have support for Windows PE, as you may know PE is console based and there were many attempts to have different file managers including explorer to run under PE, but nothing comes close to DO, and I think, it'll be a life saver inside WinPE, not as a File Manager but as a Shell.
I don't know much about PE but if Explorer doesn't work under PE I'm guessing it would be difficult for Opus to (as Opus relies on several components of Explorer, e.g. for the My Computer view).
Actually, PE is a stripped down version of WinXP (now Vista in v2.0), and although the bare build starts a command prompt, it has several shell components.
For example, you can open notepad from the command prompt, go to File menu, and trigger the File Open dialog, and browse your computer from there,of course some functionalities are missing, but as you know, the Windows Shell is mainly COM based, and in most cases missing components meaning missing some DLLs and their registration.
Another example, I have a recovery cd based on WinPE that contains Windows Explorer as a Shell not as a File Manager, and even I have IE working properly.
I remember the first days when I started playing with PE for job requirements. When I opened the properties dialog of any file or folder on NTFS, there were a Security tab but when clicking on Add or Advanced, you get errors and you're unable to browse the Security principals, but the solution was so easy, just copied two DLLs and register them at startup using regsvr32 and voila, I was even able to reset permissions on improperly secured files by adding the Administrators Well known group account (with recognizable SIDs between different systems).
Actually, many well known ISVs used WinPE as an alternative to DOS, like Symanted and their recovery Environment used with Ghost 10/11.
Another example is Acronis, which have the well known True Image (ghost like) software, we tried to make it work under WinPE, but it had serious problems with the RPC Server service, and the company made the required changes to adapt it to work under WinPE, and distribute a plugin for it with their flagship product.
I myself made some utilities that add some functionality to this environment, and even bypassed the restrictions (Legally) made by MS on the number of processes and a 24 uptime limit.
You can find these little tools on my humble Web page that I made just for others to offer them place to get the tools:
http://www.geocities.com/pierremounir/
By clicking the More Information Link under any tool, you can reach a very powerfull forum mostly dedicated to WinPE/BartPE and plugins that allow you to add most of the software you see today to this environment.
Acually, what got me enthusiastic about DO, is the new option of exporting the software to UFDs, as it means it became more self contained and this the first and an important step twoard making a plugin for WinPE.
And I already started to play with DO on my environment, I faced some missing DLLs and stopped on a missing entry in the msvcrt.dll, that I need some time to export Process Monitor to PE (I already have Registry and File Monitor) to invistigate the problem. I'm determined to get it running in PE and I'll send the screenshot here soon, God willing.
Anyway, if jon and greg are interested, and before I start struggling with missing/mismatched DLL hell, could they tell me why I get this error:
Actually I haven't started troubleshooting this yet, but as a preliminary step, i got some versions of msvcrt.dll dll and put them once in the system32 and once in the program folder but to no avail.
Could you kindly tell me why I get this error?
Anyway, I hope GPSoft get interested in porting their app as I do.
Best regards,
Pierre Mounir (aka TheTruth)
www.geocities.com/pierremounir
I had asked about this before v9 was released and was hoping that the USB export changes may have been able to pave the way for getting this to work, but alas... not quite. I was thinking of trying to actually install my certificate while running under an hdd install of UBCD4win and back tracking what dependencies are missing to get a full install working.
BTW, I'm a big fan of BartPE and UBCD4Win... nice to see you around these parts... thanks for your PE contributions!
Good news, Dopus 9 exported to USB Stick/HDD works 100% properly.
The error I had before was due to dependency mismatch between AVIFIL32.dll from Vista and MSVCRT.dll from Win2K32. I changed AVIFIL32.dll to that of Win2K3 and added MSVFW32.dll to the DOPUS folder and it started piecefully.
Actually, this success is most likely because I already have Explorer plugin with a lot of components added to WinPE, but I'm going to test it under out of the box WinPE build and track if there are missing components so that I can attach them to the Dopus USB version to have a self-contained plugin.
Thanks GPSoft for the USB export feature because it made using Dopus in WinPE merely xcopy deployment.
Thanks man, glad to see PE-interested/aware people in this forum 
Best regards,
Pierre Mounir (aka TheTruth)
www.geocities.com/pierremounir
I'd crawled through all of the Dopus binaries with dependency walker and come up with a decent list of OS files that needed to be included with Opus to get things started, and then ran into certificate issues of course.
This was all pre-v9... and while the USB export option gets us closer with a stand-alone file based DO, still not sure how useable it would be in alot of WinPE scenarios... other than just running Opus from USB bootedPE environment; which seems to be a mixed bag for alot of people depending on their hardware platform and ability to boot from USB and then weird bus reset stuff etc etc.