VistaPE

VistaPE

VistaPE booted off a Live CD
Developer(s)	nightman
Initial release	December 1, 2006

Stable release	12 RC1 / 21.10.2008
Preview release	v12RC1 / October 21, 2008 (2008-10-21)
Development status	continued/under development
Platform	the Live CD should run on any x86 computer
Website	http://vistape.winbuilder.net

VistaPE is a project (set of scripts) for WinBuilder to create a Live CD based on the kernel of Windows Vista.
VistaPE uses technology from and largely resembles Windows Preinstallation Environment 2.0 (from Microsoft), but has a graphical shell, expanded set of supported devices and functions, and can run almost any Windows program.

Features

Possibility to either fully or partially load VistaPE at startup into memory (boot.wim)
Support for a large number of SATA/RAID/SCSI/NIC drivers (thanks to the DriverPacks project).
Able to read and write NTFS/FAT32/FAT/Ext2/Ext3 partitions
Full networking support
Automatic hardware detection (PnP)
Booting from CD/HDD/UFD/Network
Compatibility with Microsoft Windows Vista
A wide range of programs and shells (Explorer, LiteStep, BS Explorer ...)
Automatic creation shortcuts for programs
No limits regarding the maximum number of open processes
Ability to remove VistaPE boot media while VistaPE is running (using boot.wim)
Full multilanguage support

Portable applications

It is complicated to install applications on the RAM of a Live CD, and all the changes made to those programs and the installation itself will be lost once the computer is rebooted, so a good alternative is to use portable applications, that can be run from either the Live CD, or from a USB flash drive connected to the computer; there is even software dedicated to create those portable applications (VMware ThinApp, Virtual Application Studio or others).

Notes

The default Live CD is less than 200MB in size.

VistaPE

Features

Portable applications

Notes

See also