Windows Vista troubleshooting

My New Favorite Vista Epigram

I jsut read a marvelous story from the Sydney Morning Herald entitled “Windows 7 looking good, especially after Vista woes.” It includes a brief but telling remark about Windows Vista to which I can’t help but ascribe epigram status — namely, “Windows Vista is widely reviled, and sometimes seems so bad that it resembles malware (malicious software).” While I can’t agree with this statement, I can’t dispute its accuracy or relevancy, either. As you read through the story, and I encourage you to do at your earliest opportunity, you’ll find plenty of other interesting and diverting bits of techno-trivia.

What I’ve had ongoing trouble with right up to the present is with Vista’s complexity and lack of incisive controls. On certain hardware configurations, I’ve repeatedly found myself in situations where Vista would keep limping along, but an increasing number of applications would fade into the “Not Responding” state. At the same time, I found myself unable to bail out of the OS using either CTRL-ALT-ESC to get into Task Manager, or CTRL-ALT-DEL to call up the login/logout/control screen. Rebooting to re-establish system stability is kind of a cop-out anyway, but I’ll be darned if either the System or Application logs in Event Viewer can provide me with any data about what caused my system to hang, and required me to peform yet another “disruptive shutdown” to regain control over my machine.

In working with Windows 7, I’ve been able to get the two “attention sequences” (CTRL-ALT-DEL and CTRL-ALT-ESC) to work as they should even when the system got extremely flaky owing to installation of an obviously incompatible driver. I have to ask: why won’t Vista work the same way? I’m not ready to put this OS in the same class as malware, and I do believe I’ve reached an “uneasy rapprochement” with Vista, to the point where I can get along with it on a day-to-day basis and keep my own and my users’ machines up and running most of the time. But I keep wondering why it gets flaky from time to time, and how I might be better able to maintain stable, long-term operation (for more discussion see my March 12 Blog at ViztaView.com).

If anybody has any wisdom to dispense here, or any war stories or hard-earned experience to share, please chime in. Surely it’s better for us to suffer together, than to do so alone! Just because you think Windows Vista is out to get you, doesn’t mean you’re paranoid.

Handy Tool: Halfdone Development’s Unknown Devices

If you’re like me, you’re nearly always in the process of building or rebuilding one or more Vista systems, or checking specific systems out for currency and correctness. Especially when dealing with new or revised builds, or with systems you haven’t worked with before, you will occasionally come across devices that Windows doesn’t recognize. When that happens the first step toward finding the correct and likely MIA device driver is to identify the device that’s currently earning a yellow question mark in Device Manager.

That’s where Unknown Devices comes in. It goes through the Windows device enumeration process and records everything it discovers during that process. Even if the program itself can’t identify a device — and I’ve seen this happen in less than a handful of instances on all the systems I’ve tried it on —it provides you with a vendor ID string in nearly every case (so far, that means 100% for me in my personal experience, but I also know that it’s possible that you might come across a device for which the software can’t find such data). With that information in hand, you can almost always Google your way to device identification, and from there to a driver for your platform and OS.

The interface is pretty spare and simple, and consists simply of a list of device categories at the top level. These map to elements that appear in Device Manager as well, though you’ll find more elements in Unknown Devices than you may see on a specific desktop. For example, I’ve turned off the floppy controller and floppy disk drives in BIOS on those machines that have no floppy drives installed and they don’t appear in Device Manager any more; nevertheless, they still show up in Unknown Devices (though no entries appear under these headings on such machines, as you might expect).

Unknown Devices lists all devices it finds using familiar Device Manager categories.

Click on any category and you can examine a listing of its contents as shown here, for the Storage Controllers category (a green checkmark indicates a signed driver):

Items listed for the Storage Controllers category.

Right-click on any item, then select device details to see basic information about the device in question. Here’s a snap of the info shown for the motherboard’s built-in ICH9R RAID controller:

Basic device information is readily available.

Despite an occasional misspelling (Vender for Vendor, Visable for Visible) the tool nevertheless delivers lots of useful information, and can help you run down and pinpoint unknown devices pretty efficiently. Better yet, I’ve recently learned from direct experience that this tool works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7, even, which makes it very handy indeed. I’d wondered why Unknown Devices was part of the basic toolkit for the various WinBuilder projects (LiveXP, VistaPE, and Win7PE) and now I know. Try it out, and so will you!

WARNING! The information that Unknown Devices turns up is only as good as the various PCI, USB, and Chipset identification text files that drive the program. You’ll definitely want to follow developer Mike “Catfish” Moniz’ advice, and grab the latest version of the PCI, PCI-e, AGP, … devices list from the link he provides for that purpose. This program is no panacea for Windows device identification or troubleshooting, but it does come in pretty handy.

Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Pro Edition

If the care and feeding of your Vista systems is anything like mine, from time to time there’s just no getting away from messing with disk partitions. For me, that means one of several activities gets underway:

• Migrating a notebook or desktop user from a smaller drive to a larger one, sometimes with additional logical volumes to add into the mix, sometimes without.
• Setting up desktop machines to use VM technology of some kind (I’ve learned it’s safer to set up and run a separate logical and/or physical volume in which to run VMs to keep system or data partitions from filling up completely).
• Setting up sandboxes of one kind or another for testing, specific applications, or whathaveyou.

I’ve used the Disk Management utility in Administrative Tools (Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management) since the NT 4.0 days, but though this tool has gained in capability and flexibility considerably since then, it still can’t compare to a commercial disk partition management tool. And as such tools go, I’ve learned to like Paragon’s Partition Manager 9.0 Professional Edition better than most of the others I’ve used (Partition Magic, EASEUS Partition Master, Acronis Disk Partition Manager, and so forth, though those with no budget for software left may have to opt for the Open Source gparted instead).

Strictly as a partition management tool, Paragon Partition Manager is worth the $65 or so this program will typically cost you. As the following screenshots amply illustrate, it not only allows you to manage partitions quite nicely (create, format, resize/redistribute space, merge, and even undelete) it will also let you copy partitions or entire drives (either logically or physically), perform various types of partition- and disk-level backups and restores, and even install a boot manager (great for multi-boot to older Windows versions and/or Linux), and even a file transfer wizard to grab files from inside a working partition, or a backup snapshot the program has made of any partition you’ve saved. There’s even a byte-level disk editor available to those knowledgeable and intrepid enough to use such a powerful but dangerous tool.

The Partition Manager Entry screen shows major functionality groups.

When you actually start to use the program, you see a multi-pane interface that looks much like many other disk utilities, with similar silos at the left (a control panel, as it were), controls and displays at the right (for specific items or tasks related to the chosen activity), and icons along the top to provide instant access to the most common tasks. Here’s a look at the wizard driven elements for Backup, Copy, and Tools on the left, with disk views at the right (notice how physical disks act as containers for logical volumes).

Tasks on left, details and displays on right (click for larger version)

All in all, Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 makes a pretty good addition to any Vista admin’s toolbox. The partition tools are the best and most worthwhile components of the tool, but the backup, copy, and boot management capabilities can be handy when migrating users from one disk to another. The recovery tools are adequate, but only from a very basic perspective (I’ll stick to a well-crafted VistaPE recovery UFD any day). I also found the lack of user-driven search a bit frustrating when the time came to search the help files (you can only plough through an index that they create, and pick the terms inserted therein). Minor nits to be sure, and no reasons not to try this program out for yourself, or even to buy a copy of your very own.

Vista Wins 2009 Fiasco Award

Gosh, I love writing headlines because they can say so much and so little at the same time. Today’s blog makes a terrific case in point. It refers to the recent Fiasco award for 2009, chosen by an anonymous Fiasco Awards Team, which was in turn sponsored by the Catalan Association of Telecommunications Engineers (apparently this is a one-time thing, so it’s neither fair nor accurate to link the Fiascos only with the Catalan Association of so-on-and-so-forth). At least one other source describes the Fiasco as a kind of “worst IT product” designation in its reporting, but closer examination of the Association’s own description of the Fiascos reveals there’s a bit more at work here than simply recognizing “worst in show” performance or capability.

What a Fiasco represents is a product, service, or idea from any sector in information and communication technologies that winds up as a complete and total flop. Here’s a quote from the afore-cited Web page that bears the title “The Spirit of the Fiasco Awards.“

Technological advance is not a straight path. Despite the economic investment, intellectual efforts and hopes invested on it, it often happens that instead of achieving a successful product, a profitable company, a new useful service or an interesting development through it, we just end up with a real Fiasco in our hands. But both success and fiasco are a part of the same process of leaping forward, head and tail of the same coin. The first, we celebrate, from the latter, when the initial shock is overcome, we learn, and in addition, they tend to be very funny.

To me this award is more synonymous with “good ideas gone spectacularly bad” or perhaps even “it seemed like a good idea at the time” than it is with a “worst in class” designation. Though there are plenty of others who will tar and feather Vista with bad reviews, bad marks, and even bad cess, I think it’s fantastic that an IT organization would seek to find humor in making such awards. Lord knows there have been days when I’ve chased Vista’s tail all over the landscape when a little humor would have been more than welcome. And so I can appreciate and embrace the idea of the Fiasco much more than something more curmudgeonly in outlook and intent. After all the kvetching about Vista I’ve slogged through in writing this blog, it’s great to find something that’s more on the tongue-in-cheek side of the street rather than the vitriolic rant side instead.

Here’s how Vista acquired the 2009 Fiasco award. In response to a survey, 6400 individuals registered on the Fiasco site, and completed a ranking poll to choose the winner. With 5222 (or 81.6%) of respondents choosing Windows Vista, it swamped the other competitors for this award. These included OLPC (One Laptop Per Child, the second place finisher), Second Life (third), Google Lively (4th), and Mobuzz (5th), though numerical breakdowns for these other contestants aren’t readily available.

Tonight at dinner, I’m going to raise my glass and propose a toast to my favorite Fiasco–namely Windows Vista. I urge you to do likewise, at your first opportunity.

Another Use for WinPE: WinRE UFD To the Rescue

If you’ve ever messed with the Windows Vista Recovery Environment you know it’s helpful, but it can take quite a while for it to appear on-screen on a machine in need of repair or recovery. In fact, the functionality behind this display is a WinPE-based facility that’s bundled with the Windows Install Media, and invoked from a Windows Image file (.wim) when you select the “Repair an existing Vista system” from the install menu.

This low-res screen cap of the Recovery Environment describes your Vista Repair options:
here, you want to pick Windows Complete PC Restore.

On most of my Vista machines, it takes in excess of three minutes to get from the Vista install DVD to the System Recovery Options menu shown in the preceding screen capture, and it can sometimes take more than 10 minutes to pop up (as when finding and fixing boot-up issues, as it sometimes must). If you follow the instructions I provide in a recent story for Tom’s Guide “How to Make and Use a Bootable WinPE Drive” you will learn how to use the install media and the Windows Automated Instllation Kit (WAIK) to create a bootable UFD with the Vista Recovery Environment at your disposal. Unlike its DVD-based counterpart, however, this little gem usually presents itself on-screen in under two minutes, which lets you get to work far faster (on the notebook in question, the screen popped up in 1:07).

I was forcibly reminded of this yesterday, when I installed a new driver on one of my test notebook PCs, only to discover that the device went missing upon reboot, and that System Restore was also unable to roll back to the preceding restore point (I later learned this comes from a side effect of Norton security products, as documented in this Symantec page on the “Restoration Incomplete” error also produced during this process). What to do when restore points won’t work (and you don’t yet know how to fix that problem): use the Recovery Environment and a recent backup to restore your system to a pristine state. Luckily for me, I had just backed up my system the night before so I was back up and running in under 15 minutes, restore and all. This time, I skipped the IDT HD Audio driver update that started all my problems, and then went off to research exactly what happened, and why. In a roundabout way, all this led to today’s blog post.

Nevertheless, I was glad to have had this handy little tool at my disposal, which I’ve already used to repair Vista on a couple of machines since building the WinRE UFD in late January. You might want to add one of these to your toolkit. Any old UFD larger than 256MB will do: my WinRE UFD weighs in at 330 MB in all. Thus, a freebie or cheapie 1 GB UFD will work just fine for this purpose.

Boot-Land.com is another hidden treasure

If you read my previous blog, you already know that VistaPE is  a project that uses WinBuilder to automate the construction of a WinPE 2.0-based bootable image from the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) as well as the Vista OS install media (or a hard-disk copy thereof, for much better build-time performance). What may not have been clear in that posting, has now become crystal clear to me, thanks to spending a large part of the last two days devouring the forum posts, tutorials, and how-to’s available at Nuno Brito’s stellar site www.Boot-Land.net, the home of WinBuilder and an affiliate site for VistaPE.net.

What I didn’t immediately realize but am now keenly aware of, is that this site is a treasure trove of Windows internals lore, tools references, and information that has to be explored to be believed, and deeply pondered to be fully understood. I have learned more in the past two days about Windows boot structures, how the boot process begins, about the various types of file systems and MBR records that PC BIOSes can create and the various versions of Windows can accommodate, and how to build bootable floppies, hard disks, UFDs, and optical media than I ever imagined possible.

To me, Boot-Land.net is a stunning and entirely convincing demonstration of the power of open source and community effort. There’s no way a commercial outfit would be willing to disclose the kind of information that people want and need to know about low-level inner workings of operating systems, bootstrap loaders, BIOS operations, and related forensics and construction tools–at least, not without feeling like its “valuable intellectual property” had been given away purely for good will. Boot-Land.net does this as a matter of deliberate policy, design, and support for community.

Any Windows professionals, including those who work with XP and Vista, as well as other versions both older and newer, will find lots of interesting, valuable, and useful information here about how to design, build, and install compact boot environments for Windows machines. They’ll also learn about lots of tools they can include in such environments for installation, automated deployment, troubleshooting, and system repair.

I’d have to recommend this as one of the best resources I’ve ever seen when it comes to understanding how the Windows OS is put together, how it loads and boots, and what kinds of specifics are necessary to fit customized configurations to particular collections of hardware (motherboard, CPU, chipsets, devices, peripherals, and so forth). My only beefs against the site are its “sink or swim” approach to organizing and presenting information and providing guidance to newbies, and the incredible amount of information through which interested parties must work to find the items of greatest interest and relevance to them. But when compared to the treasures and wisdom so liberally scattered around its collection of goodies, those are pretty minor beefs indeed.

You simply must check it out! http://www.boot-land.net/forums/

A Fabulous WinPE Resource: VistaPE

As I’ve learned to build various types of bootable CDs and UFDs with the Vista-based WinPE environment, I’ve also been working to learn more about its inner workings and capabilities. As I struggled to figure out how to add Windows Explorer and some kind of Web browser to a runtime WinPE image (which usually takes the form of a Windows image file named boot.wim or something similar) I discovered what might not unfairly be called the “ultimate Windows PE resource.” It’s a Web site that serves a very active and capable developer and user community called VistaPE.

Let me explain what makes VistaPE tick first and foremost, then explain what VistaPE has to offer. The foundation for VistaPE is a scripting and Windows build tool called WinBuilder. It works from either Windows XP or Vista to create boot disks (and in fact, incorporates WinPE 2.0 for Vista into the Vista side of that equation), but it goes way beyond what the basic Microsoft toolkit provides via imagex.exe and the other basic elements in their toolbox. VistaPE builds on this foundation to add significant applications and capabilities on top of the WinPE 2.0 kernel to support a more-or-less complete graphical user interface (GUI) environment. Thus, the VistaPE runtime environment–which is incredibly user-configurable and flexible, and continuously extended and expanded upon through a growing script library–is more like a “real Windows” than a basic command line interpreter (CLI) environment.

Here’s how I found VistaPE: In seeking to extend my WinPE skills and abilities, I’d started trying to research methods to include Windows Explorer in the WinPE environment after reading several postings online that (a) mentioned this could be done and (b) finding no concrete details on exactly how to do so. My basic computer science training told me that it would require mapping out the code dependencies from within Explorer to determine what other DLLs and executable elements were required to make the program run. I quickly discovered thereafter that some DLLs must be registered with Windows as well as present in the runtime environment to work properly, after a simple analysis with Mark Russinovich’s dllist utility failed to produce the desired results. That’s what led me back on the research trail and, ultimately, to the VistaPE Web site.

I knew I’d struck paydirt when, after downloading and installing WinBuilder and the VistaPE script library, I was able to produce this screenshot:

The VistaPE scripts in WinBuilder make adding Explorer a piece of cake

As it turns out, adding Explorer just barely begins to describe what VistPE can do within WinBuilder. It also provides an alternate and somewhat more functional graphic file system interface tool called BS Explorer 2, and even supports the Linux-inspired Grub4DOS boot management toolset.

But beyond the VistaPE Base toolset shown in the preceding screenshot, please note the other major checkbox elements in WinBuilder’s left-column pane:

• Addons: scripts and settings for common WinPE components (WSH, MDAC, HTA, WMI, and XML), plus a GUI for diskpart.exe, common dll-based libraries for Visual Basic and more, Internet Explorer 7, PE’s network configuration tool (PENetCfg), and lots more.
• Drivers: drivers required for chipsets, LAN interfaces, storage devices, and standard VGA graphics.
• Tweaks: elements to enhance the user interface, control various applications, manage graphic shells,…
• App: add-ins for a huge library of basic applications from antivirus, to file compression, to data recovery, and a great deal more.
• OtherOS: access to other OS tools and environments for multi-boot setups.
• Finalize: tools use to complete the construction of a Windows image (.wim) file from all the preceding VistaPE scripts (which include binary code as well as assembly instructions, so you can add executables right into the boot.wim base image)
• Virtual Test: lets you load and run your Windows image file in a virtual machine to see how (and if) it works as you want it to.
• Debug: used to mount and inspect .wim files and edit Registry hives to check and fix problems.

To me, VistaPE is an entirely new and wonderful world of capability and functionality that cries out for more study and improved understanding. I’ve already been able to use it to build much more powerful and capable boot images than I had been able to hand-craft on my own. But I can also see that there’s a great deal more going on here than immediately meets the eye, or falls readily into my grasp. If you dig into this environment, you’ll come to the same realizations equally quickly yourself. Please check it out soon!

Other Uses for a Bootable WinPE UFD

I’ve just finished writing a story for Tom’s Guide on using a bo0table WinPE UFD, and doing the research  for that story led me to a few interesting discoveries. First and foremost, no self-respecting Vista administrator should be without a bootable WinRE UFD–but perhaps, WinRE is more recognizable as the Windows Recovery Environment that you can fire up from the Windows Vista installation media.

It turns out, you can also follow my instructions on building a bootable WinPE UFD, and then use the imagex utility from the Windows Automated Installation Kit to capture the recovery environment Windows Image (.wim) file from your installation media. All you have to do then is swap the boot.wim file that my process creates in your ISO\sources directory with the boot.wim file that you export from your install media, and presto! you’ve got a WinRE console that boots in under two minutes, instead of having to wait three to five minutes for the same functionality to become available from the Vista installation DVDs.

Because I’m always messing with various Vista installs, I have to resort to the recovery environment at least once a week where I work. I’m guessing that busy system admins with any number of Vista machines to care for can beat that frequency with ease. In such cases, a bootable UFD with the WinRE console ready to hand can help save lots of wait time, and enable more “work time” on affected Vista systems.

Another, perhaps more esoteric use, might be on netbook PCs where disk space can be at a premium. I’m learning how to extend the WinPE environment to run other programs, including Windows Explorer (and some claim, even IE) from within the WinPE context. Because most simple Windows GUI apps (think items in the Accessories folder, as good examples of what this means) will already run in WinPE, it’s not hard to conceive that a somewhat extended WinPE environment could be workable for netbook users seeking to slim runtime system size to 0.5GB or smaller (by itself, the WinPE I describe how to build in my previous blog is about 367 MB in size; WinRE is less than 250 MB, but lacks network drivers and access).

As time goes by, I’m sure I’ll figure out some other cool uses for WinPE as well. If you know of any, please share them with me in the meantime!

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

Like clockwork, Microsoft proffers up a new version of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tools on each and every Patch Tuesday. In January, 2009, that item is described in Knowledge Base article KB890830. This tool is not intended to replace anti-virus or anti-spyware tool, but it can be nice for Vista admins to recognize that the tool gets updated monthly and can more or less be guaranteed to be present on Vista PCs as long as:

• Updates get pushed to Vista desktops regularly
• The list of pushed updates includes the current Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

Just for grins, I decided to dig up and learn the details involved in using this tool. The name of the executable file is mrt.exe, which is actually the recommended string to launch the tool as well (simply type mrt.exe into the Vista search box, and it’s off and to the races).

Once you fire off this program, it presents a window on the desktop that looks like this:

The Malicious Software Removal Tool Reports status as it scans

As it’s running, mrt.exe can consume some resources, however. Check out these screen caps from my Sidebar CPU usage widget and Task Manager’s process window, captured about the same time as the preceding screenshot:

CPU consumption usually runs about 25% for this program

Task Manager shows that the mrt process is pretty active

The good thing about mrt.exe is that if admins need to help users cope with possible malware infestations on the road, it’s nearly always safe to assume that this tool will be available on the machine, ready to use to help track down and possibly clean up what ails it. That said, mrt.exe can be the only tool in the clean-up arsenal, where special purpose diagnostic tools such as HijackThis or various rootkit detectors must often play a role, and where special purpose one shot clean up tools from various antimalware vendors must also occasionally be called into play.

But as tools go, this one ain’t bad, and it’s never too far from any Vista machine, either. If there’s one downside to mrt.exe, it’s speed: on a test scan on my production Vista PC (Ultimate, with about 90 GB of files spread across 3 hard disks) the program took over 3 hours to perform a complete, in-depth scan of my system. Savvy admins will have tired road warriors fire this off before an extended break, or before bedtime, to help their charges avoid excessive losses of computing cycles on their traveling machines.

Create a bootable WinPE UFD

Everybody knows what a UFO is, but let me remind readers that Microsoft interprets UFD as “USB Flash Drive.” Thus, what I’m about to describe is best understood as how to create a bootable Flash drive that includes the Windows Vista SP1 Pre-boot Environment (aka Window PE or even WinPE). Interestingly, if you simply troll TechNet or the Microsoft Download Center, you’ll be directed to Windows Automated Installation Kit version 1.0. But if you’re working from post-SP1 Vista (as most readers of this blog probably are), you really want Version 2.1, which is designed to support that environment. You’ll find that on the download page entitled “Automation Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008” instead.

You’ll download an ISO image of the latest WAIK, which you must then burn to a DVD (it’s 1.2 GB in size and won’t fit on a CD). I used Alex Feinman’s excellent Windows Explorer add-in named ISO Recorder v3 for this (and for all my iso files) but you can use any Vista-compatible DVD burning program you like to do this job. AFter that run the file named startcd.exe on the DVD to launch WAIK. This produces the following screen:

WAIK 2.1 welcome

Click the option that reads Windows AIK Setup to install WAIK on your current computer (it must be running Vista SP1, in case this isn’t completely obvious). By default this installs WAIK in the C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\ directory. Click your way through the installation screens to make the various WAIK tools available on your PC (on my desktop, this took about three minutes, YMMV).

Next, click Start, All Programs, Windows AIK, then finally Windows PE Tools Command Prompt. Inside the command window, type

Copype.cmd x86 C:\winpe_x86:

where x86 indicates a 32-bit environment and x64 a 64-bit environment, and C:\winpe_x86 is where the various WinPE binaries and directories will be created. After that you can copy tools and utilities from the WAIK Tools directory for your architecture (x86 for 32-bit PCs, and so forth) into the ISO subdirectory beneath C:\Winpe_x86. I usually grab Imagex.exe and the Package Manager, using these commands:

copy "c:\program files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\imagex.exe" c:\winpe_x86\iso\
xcopy "c:\program files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\Servicing" c:\winpe_x86\iso\Servicing /s

Of course, you’ll have to change the architecture designation for a 64-bit install to x64, and you’ll need to tell the CLI that the xcopy command points to a directory specification, but otherwise things should work for you, if you simply cut and paste these commands into the command window you’ll have open when you create the C:\WinPE_86 environment on your machine.

Next, you must scrub your UFD clean, mark its single partition as active, and format it for FAT32. The following sequence of commands will do the trick (replace n with the actual disk number for your UFD, use the list disk command inside diskpart to get this information:

diskpart
select disk n
clean
create partition primary size=
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit

After that you need only copy the ISO subdirectory from your C: drive to the drive letter for your UFD to make your bootable image thereupon. The following xcopy command will work (just be sure to correct the drive letter at the end of that command string):

xcopy c:\winpe_x86\iso\*.* /s /e /f i:\

As you work with this boot image, you’ll probably find other tools you want to add to your toolbox. You must copy them into the ISO subdirectory on your C: drive (along with any other supporting files they might need), then reformat the UFD, and repeat the preceding xcopy command to make them available when you boot from that drive.