Active@Boot Disk on Windows Deployment Services

We use a toolset from Active@ called UNDELETE. It's a nifty little program for recovering files off of hard disks that have been wiped, have a broken partition, etc.

One of the nicest features is the ability to use the program from a Windows PE 2.0 ISO to boot a machine and recover files. While this is nice, network booting it is a a much nicer solution that doesn't require you to have a CD on you at all times. After some tinkering, I've gotten it to sucessfully PXE.

What you need: Windows Server 2003 SP2 Windows Deployment Services server and the BootDiskEnt.ISO from the Active@ Boot Disk.

Process:

1. Mount the BootDiskEnt.ISO using your favorite ISO mounting utility.
2. Navigate to "X:\Sources\" (where X is the drive letter where you mounted the ISO
   
3. Copy the Boot.WIM file over the the deployment server.
4. On the deployment server, open up Windows Deployment Services MMC
5. Expand the tree to : Windows Deployment Services -> Servers -> Server Name -> Boot Images.
6. Right click and select "Add Boot Image".
7. In the wizard, click Browse and select the Boot.WIM file. Click Next until you complete the wizard.
   
8. It will take a few minutes to load, once it does you should see "Active@Boot Disk" listed as a boot image.
   
9. To use it, simply boot the system from the WDS server over PXE and select "Active@ Boot Disk" from the list of available boot images. It will boot just as if you had loaded it off of CD.