I have been working away on doing this at my company and it is actually really easy to run a browser in WinPE. All you need to do is download a portable browser (Chrome, Firefox etc... IE is the only one that is not able to be portable).
So search online for "Chrome portable" or "Firefox portable" and download that. Then move the portable browser into the WinPE image (I put it in %systemdrive%\windows\system32\
).
Once you are at the command prompt in WinPE you can just type the name of the executable and it will run the portable browser.
An example of this is: I want to run Google Chrome in WinPE, I downloaded the portable Chrome browser and moved the folder and files into the WinPE image under the system32
folder. I boot in WinPE and at command prompt I type:
x:\windows\system32\googlechromeportable\googlechromeportable.exe
Now you have a web browser in WinPE. You may have to change your directories to point to wherever you injected the browser into the image, but you get the point. After doing that, you can also create a batch file to run this at WinPE startup but thats another topic.
I don`t think it is possible to insert GUI applications such Firefox on WINPE. As far I know only command-based programs are allowed... – Diogo – 2012-06-01T01:08:59.980
I'm certain that it is. In fact, the WinPE-HTA package "Enables the creation of GUI applications using the Internet Explorer script engine and HTML services.". I assume that I need that package, but I do not know what else I need.
– graf_ignotiev – 2012-06-01T17:51:46.477Take a look at this video. Maybe it helps.
– Diogo – 2012-06-01T18:01:38.380Also, WinPE-HTA is a tool already provided for WINPE, it is a optional tool as the related website says, it is not a standalone application such as Firefox... I'm hope I'm wrong, but I still think installing aditional softwares such as GUI-based tools are not allowed on WINPE. – Diogo – 2012-06-01T18:06:03.087
I'm reading through this post and it seems to indicate that what I'm looking for is possible, but I have to look through it and see if it delivers.
– graf_ignotiev – 2012-06-01T21:35:19.197