Dual boot Windows PE 2005 / Windows Server 2003 R2

It's a LOT easier than you think... forget about anything involving copying setupldr or anything else from the PE source, or using Barts peldr util. All you have to do is:

1. Install the Recovery Console
2. Copy BOOTSECT.DAT from the cmdcons directory to the root of C:
3. Copy your PE I386 directory to the root of C:
4. Rename the PE I386 directory to MININT
5. Copy the winbom.ini from MININT to the root C:
6. Add a line C:\BOOTSECT.DAT = "Windows PE" /MININT to boot.ini

And that's it. Obviously when you boot into this PE environment, the C: drive will actually be X:. I'm not sure if there's another way to get it booting straight into RAM off an ISO without replacing the native 2003 ntldr, but that sure would be nice.

Note: I'm not sure if you actually need to install the Recovery Console, but you at least need the bootsect.dat and cmldr files in the root of C. If you get an 'ntldr missing' error, it's actually the cmldr that you are missing.

Moving the Admin Tools shortcuts...

It's really annoying that even after doing this...

@echo off
echo Moving Admin Tools Shortcuts...
move /Y "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools" "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Administrative Tools"
echo Setting Admin Tools Shortcut location in registry...
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders" /v "Common Administrative Tools" /t REG_SZ /d "%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Administrative Tools" /F
REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" /v "Common Administrative Tools" /t REG_EXPAND_SZ /d "%%ALLUSERSPROFILE%%\Start Menu\Administrative Tools" /F

... if you install something else that drops a shortcut into the Administrative Tools directory, like IIS for example, it still puts the shortcuts into %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools.

Really annoying.

Copy Local Policies to other machines...

Here's how I have done it / seen it done

1. Configure the local policy on one machine
2. Copy the %systemroot%\System32\GroupPolicy folder to somewhere on the network / your distribution share / whatever
3. On each target machine, assuming the 'master' GroupPolicy directory is located at D:\GroupPolicy, do

attrib -H %systemroot%\system32\GroupPolicy
xcopy D:\GroupPolicy\* %SystemRoot%\system32\GroupPolicy /e /v /c /i /h /r /y
attrib +H %systemroot%\system32\GroupPolicy

Reboot the target machine and all should be well.