Trying to use Bootable Rescue Disk on Surface Pro 4

Bob, which version of the bootable rescue media have you created?  If this is the standard, linux based, media then it may not have all the necessary device drivers for your Surface Pro 4 keyboard.

The recommendation here would be to create the Windows PE version of the Rescue Media which uses the Windows 10 ADK and should contain all the device drivers needed.  A further recommendation would be to use the MVP Tool described in post: 127281: MVP Tool - CUSTOM ATI WINPE BUILDER which will allow you to add any additional device drivers if needed.

Steve, you were right on the mark (and reminded me of this same issue when I did this previously for another computer) - Thanks!! But now I run into another problem, and that is that I can't figure out how to get to the .tib files on my NAS.

I boot on my USB drive, select Recovery in the ATI app and then click on 'Browse for Backups'. In my older system, I then typed the IP address of my NAS in the Filename field (in my case, \\10.0.1.23\), hit enter, and the shares on my NAS drive would come up (like 'Other Backups'). Then I drilled down to the appropriate backup and selected the appropriate .tib file. However now, when I enter \\10.0.1.23\ in the filename field, and then hit enter, nothing happens. Thoughts? I have no problem accessing my NAS from ATI from my normal Win10 setup. Is this another driver problem? Something else?

It just struck me that my Surface Pro 4 connects to the internet via an ethernet connection into a Surface Dock. When I first installed the Dock, I had to run a small file (like 1KB) named 'surface dock registry.reg'. Would the WinPE recue disk have access to that? Is it possible that I am not connected to my LAN because the Dock doesn't have access to the right software (driver) when I am booted up on the WinPE USB?

Thanks again, Bob

WinPE requires you to use net use to map a share as a letter first. You can also do this with a43 file explorer which can be navigated to from the command prompt. Better yet, download our MVP pe builder advanced version and you'll have a lot more ease of use with explorer.

to test network connectivity in WinPE use ping from command prompt. Can you ping your gateway...  192.168.1.1 in many cases but really depends on your router and its default subnet.

When booted with WinPE, tested network connectivity with ping and was able to see both the gateway and my NAS.

Created new rescue disk using MVP Advanced v7.3 [did NOT add any drivers] and booted from resulting boot USB without problem. However no joy when trying to access NAS from Recovery > Browse for files. Figured I needed to connect the specific NAS share, so I went to the File Explorer provided in the Advanced MVP Tools, right clicked on My PC and clicked on Map Network Drive. However the usual dialog for connecting to a NAS Share did not come up. Figuring I needed to try the net use command but I couldn't get the parameters right. If this is the problem, perhaps you can help me build the proper net use command. Parameters for my system are:

• NAS IP: 10.0.1.23
• NAS Name: GanzNAS
• Share Name: Other Backup (with the space)
• User name: admin
• User PW: [I'll fill it in]
• Path to .tib files: \\GanzNas\Other Backups\Acronis\Surface Pro

If this is not my problem, what next?

Thanks, Bob

Bob, you need to use the following Net Use command:

net use s: \\10.0.1.23\Other Backups\Acronis password /user:admin

Steve's NAS test with WinPE boot media wrote:

X:\windows\system32>net use s: \\192.168.0.29\backup password /USER:Acronis
The command completed successfully.

X:\windows\system32>net use
New connections will be remembered.

Status       Local     Remote                    Network
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK           S:        \\192.168.0.29\backup     Microsoft Windows Network
The command completed successfully.

X:\windows\system32>dir s:
 Volume in drive S is Backup
 Volume Serial Number is BFF2-0F1E

 Directory of S:\

06/18/2016  09:01 AM    <DIR>          .
02/02/2017  05:00 PM    <DIR>          ..
01/31/2017  08:02 PM    <DIR>          ATX-P4-7
12/08/2016  04:18 AM    <DIR>          Dell Studio 1545
01/29/2017  07:01 AM    <DIR>          Lenovo 7103
10/03/2016  04:26 AM    <DIR>          Chris Lenovo laptop
10/08/2016  05:12 PM    <DIR>          Samsung NC10
01/29/2017  09:39 AM    <DIR>          Chris Dell 3100
02/01/2017  11:03 AM    <DIR>          Dell Dimension DVR
09/03/2016  12:23 AM    <DIR>          Lenovo TCEdge71
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
              10 Dir(s)  2,165,438,205,952 bytes free

X:\windows\system32>

I tried the following net use command (with the correct password) and as you can see, it failed. Could there be an issue re the space in the sharename (Other Backup)? If so, is there a way around it? [I pinged the 10.0.1.23 first to make sure it was available]

net use s: \\10.0.1.23\Other Backup\Acronis PW /user:admin
The syntax of this command is:

NET USE
[devicename | *] [\\computername\sharename[\volume] [password | *]]
        [/USER:[domainname\]username]
        [/USER:[dotted domain name\]username]
        [/USER:[username@dotted domain name]
        [/SMARTCARD]
        [/SAVECRED]
        [[/DELETE] | [/PERSISTENT:{YES | NO}]]

NET USE {devicename | *} [password | *] /HOME

NET USE [/PERSISTENT:{YES | NO}]

Got it! Remembered from my old, old geek days (back far enough that I actually programmed in Fortran) that I needed to delimit the extended folder name with " and it works fine. Thanks for all the help and patience.

Bob

Bob, glad you got it to work for you - spaces in folder names can be a royal pain... 

Yup, any paths that have spaces, always need quotes.  Otherwise, the path ends at the space.  Quotes encapsulate the entire path, to include the spaces.  If/when possible, best practice is to not use spaces in folder names, but instead, use an underscore or hyphens when possible. 

Successfully created MVP Advanced rescue disks on all 3 of my computers and 2 of 3 tested successfully.

The 2 that succeeded are wired ethernet; the third is wireless. I cannot ping to the network on the 3rd. I am guessing that the WiFi driver is not installed on the rescue disk. Do you think that is the problem? I noted that there is an option to install custom drivers on the WINPE MVP batch file - is this where I install the driver? If so, how do I do it - do I just copy the driver files identified in the control panel hardware dialog into the MVP drivers file under folder NIC with a new subfolder for the driver name? Or is there another way to do it?If this is not  my problem, any other suggestions?

Bob, there is no wireless support in the MVP WinPE Rescue Media - this has been discussed previously and is a challenge to implement it, but there is a separate sticky topic in the 2017 Forum: 126974: Guide to Creating 32 or 64 Bit WinPE Recovery Media with WiFi Support which has a lot of information on doing this when using the MustangPE media.

Steve is correct. Micorosft specifically limits wireless capability in Windows ADK (WLAN service and features are not included in ADK).  You can add wirless support using Winre.wim in place of winpe.wim (from your recovery parition, or extracted from a Windows installer disk) and substitue it out when you build the build the WinPE (however there are some additional services to start as well and you must also excract a wireless profile from a live system and import that too).   

We're working on this with the MVP tool, but you'll have to supply your own winre.wim and wireless drivers. More to come in the (hopefully) near future.