WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec low resolution

[depler]

Official FAQ

• [X] I have checked the official FAQ.

Ventoy Version

1.0.49

What about latest release

Yes. I have tried the latest release, but the bug still exist.

BIOS Mode

UEFI Mode

Partition Style

MBR, GPT

Disk Capacity

Any

Image file checksum (if applicable)

No response

What happened?

WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec has very low resolution, probably 800x600. It cannot be changed after OS is loaded. I've also tried to boot within Ventoy text mode - no success.

[depler]

Update: by some reason WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec is not loading video drivers automatically, but they can be enabled manually from Start->Drivers->Install Video Drivers. There is no such problem if I use "dedicated USB drive" without Ventoy. It seems Ventoy somehow affects WinPE behavior.

[krystofkrticka]

I also have this issue when booting either Windows Installer or Hirens Boot CD. I also have my flash drive in MBR mode so Ventoy is compatible with older HW.

[krystofkrticka]

This issue also happens on GPT partition style formatted flash drive.

[krystofkrticka]

Ventoy Version

1.0.47

This problem is in all versions of ventoy at time of writing this comment, tested on latest 1.0.48

[krystofkrticka]

Ventoy Version

1.0.47

This problem is in all versions of ventoy at time of writing this comment, tested on latest 1.0.48

Still persists on 1.0.49

[AnomSanjaya]

Update: by some reason WinPE 10-8 Sergei Strelec is not loading video drivers automatically, but they can be enabled manually from Start->Drivers->Install Video Drivers. There is no such problem if I use "dedicated USB drive" without Ventoy. It seems Ventoy somehow affects WinPE behavior.

this method work almost 100%, but didnt work in newer hardware (eg: RTX 2070 Super where i just tested in Razer Laptop or Intel Iris Xe) cause the inf driver isn't present on thats Strelec ISOs or the inf present but didn't respond.

U might try to change resolution in the "change resolution" at F5 (temporary) or VTOYEFI partition\grub\themes\ventoy\theme.txt (but it will resulting by Fuzzy Screen in certain hardware or "Out of Range" because unsupported monitor resolution on older hardware"

[krystofkrticka]

this method work almost 100%, but didnt work in newer hardware (eg: RTX 2070 Super where i just tested in Razer Laptop or Intel Iris Xe) cause the *inf driver isnt present on thats Strelec ISOs.\n\nU might try to change resolution in the \"change resolution\" at F5 (temporary) or VTOYEFI partition\grub\themes\ventoy\theme.txt (but it will resulting by Fuzzy Screen in certain hardware or \"Out of Range\" because unsupported monitor resolution on older hardware\

Tried this on multiple WinPE iso files but the resolution was still 800x600

[AnomSanjaya]

this method work almost 100%, but didnt work in newer hardware (eg: RTX 2070 Super where i just tested in Razer Laptop or Intel Iris Xe) cause the *inf driver isnt present on thats Strelec ISOs.\n\nU might try to change resolution in the "change resolution" at F5 (temporary) or VTOYEFI partition\grub\themes\ventoy\theme.txt (but it will resulting by Fuzzy Screen in certain hardware or "Out of Range" because unsupported monitor resolution on older hardware\

Tried this on multiple WinPE iso files but the resolution was still 800x600

didn't work, might 800x600 is safest resolution i think for avoid from Out of Range or Fuzzy Screen

*this isn't serious problem to me cause its compactbillity issuse

[krystofkrticka]

Probably since I was loading it on pretty recent laptop. But as said in one of the replies above when loaded from flash drive directly without ventoy resolution is as it should be.

[depler]

Any progress about this?

[krystofkrticka]

Sadly no. The weirdest thing is that on my old laptop (i5-5200U and Intel HD 5500) resolution is normal but when I load ventoy on computer with GTX 1070 or my new laptop (i7-8565U and Intel UHD 620) resolution is 800x600 both GPUs are not that new.

[AnomSanjaya]

Sadly no. The weirdest thing is that on my old laptop (i5-5200U and Intel HD 5500) resolution is normal but when I load ventoy on computer with GTX 1070 or my new laptop (i7-8565U and Intel UHD 620) resolution is 800x600 both GPUs are not that new.

Cause the Laptop is dual graphics, the Strelec sometimes will confuse where these driver will install, some case will install Intel driver only or Nvidia driver only

[krystofkrticka]

Sadly no. The weirdest thing is that on my old laptop (i5-5200U and Intel HD 5500) resolution is normal but when I load ventoy on computer with GTX 1070 or my new laptop (i7-8565U and Intel UHD 620) resolution is 800x600 both GPUs are not that new.

Cause the Laptop is dual graphics, the Strelec sometimes will confuse where these driver will install, some case will install Intel driver only or Nvidia driver only

I already wrote the this issue is not limited to this particular Windows PE ISO because this happens even with official windows installer ISO or other Windows PE ISOs. In installer ISO it is not that anoying but in Windows PE with desktop Hirens Boot or here mention sterelc it is very anoying because the resolution is too low to do anything on desktop.

[depler]

Cause the Laptop is dual graphics, the Strelec sometimes will confuse where these driver will install, some case will install Intel driver only or Nvidia driver only

This is not about graphic cards or drivers. Ventoy somehow affects screen resolution of WinPE at boot - it is very low during windows bootscreen. Dedicated usb drive without Ventoy doesn't have this problem.

[krystofkrticka]

Well niether of laptops has graphics card switching technology using mux both use some kind of optimus like switching. One has amd switchabke graphics (newer laptop) and other has nvidia optimus (older one) both technologies should work that image from dedicated GPUs goes through iGPU which is connected to display.

[fernandofig]

Hopefully this will help for you (did for me): setup your ventoy/ventoy.json file (on main partition) like this:

{
    "theme": {
        "display_mode": "CLI"
    }
}

Then boot into ventoy, go into the tools menu (F5), then into Resolution Configuration and change the resolution to the maximum supported by your display. You'll notice that the console will be still in text mode, but using the native full resolution of your display.

At this point every menu you go into or out from inside ventoy will show this error:

error: not a regular file.

Press any key to continue...

But after dismissing this prompt everything will still be working normally, and at this point you can go back and select Win10 Strelec iso, and it (hopefully - again, it did for me) will boot in full resolution.

I did try to just leave display mode on "GUI", just set the resolution to the maximum resolution and booting, but it seems while the display mode is set to GUI and when you choose an ISO, ventoy will switch to (low-resolution) console mode right before booting the ISO, which ends up still constraining Strelec to a low-resolution.

Anyway, I needed a more permanent workaround, so I went digging on the EFI partition of ventoy. After experimenting on grub/grub.cfg it seemed clear that trying to fix or workaround whatever is going on in GUI mode was not going to work - it looks like whatever on ventoy that resets the resolution before booting the iso is bypassed in CLI mode.

So here's what I did (keep in mind this applies for ventoy 1.0.51, which is the latest at the time of this writing) - on grub/grub.cfg, around line 2079, you have this:

if [ "$vtoy_display_mode" = "CLI" ]; then
    terminal_output  console
elif [ "$vtoy_display_mode" = "serial" ]; then
...

So before the first "elif" I've added this:

elif [ "$vtoy_display_mode" = "GCLI" ]; then
    terminal_output  gfxterm

Such that now that part of the "if" block looks like this:

if [ "$vtoy_display_mode" = "CLI" ]; then
    terminal_output  console
elif [ "$vtoy_display_mode" = "GCLI" ]; then
    terminal_output  gfxterm
elif [ "$vtoy_display_mode" = "serial" ]; then

Then on the main partition, on ventoy/ventoy.json , I have this:

{
    "theme": {
        "gfxmode": "1920x1080,1600x1200,1600x900,1280x720,1024x768",
        "display_mode": "GCLI"
    }
}

Supposedly "gfxmode": "auto" would also work according to grub docs, in that grub would select the maximum detected resolution automatically, but it didn't work for me. As per grub docs the gfxmode setting also accepts a comma separated list of resolutions, in which case grub will try the resolutions in the list in the order that they appear, and set the first one that works successfully. The display resolution of the laptop I've used to test all this up is actually 1600x900, I added other higher ones before because I expect to use this usb thumb drive on other machines for troubleshooting purposes.

The downside of this workaround is that you still get the error prompt "error: not a regular file..." on ventoy startup and every interaction inside of ventoy, except for choosing an iso. I guess maybe that's something for @ventoy to look into, but I'm not sure if it merits its own issue here on github since it's such a corner case...

[krystofkrticka]

@fernandofig

Thanks this is awesome workaround. I just did edits to ventoy.json file in main partition and that worked just fine. But I agree that if "gfxmode":"auto" it would be much easier.

[depler]

@krystofkrticka why these tweaks are not in ventoy release yet?

[krystofkrticka]

@depler

why these tweaks are not in ventoy release yet?

I don't know. I'm not a contributor to ventoy. I was just responding to @fernandofig comment.

[fernandofig]

why these tweaks are not in ventoy release yet?

That would be something for @ventoy to look into. Ideally, actually, it would be better to fix GUI mode so that it doesn't switch to low-res CLI/console right before booting into the ISO, and instead keep whatever resolution is set on GUI mode, which I believe would fix the problem proper without requering the workaround I came up with, but I don't really have the time to dig that deep. It would be nice if @ventoy would fix at least the annoying "error: not a regular file." prompt that keeps popping up when using the workaround, because that's clearly a bug somewhere. Let me know if you want me to open a separate issue for this.

[depler]

Understood. Actually, I've just tried to change display mode and resolution - for my hardware it works only within ventoy. Right after I select WinPE iso file - I've got low resolution instantly.

Anyway, this is a very annoying solution with error: not a regular file on every keypress. And besides, file grub.cfg will be overwritten on every @ventoy update.

[fernandofig]

Understood. Actually, I've just tried to change display mode and resolution - for my hardware it works only within ventoy. Right after I select WinPE iso file - I've got low resolution instantly.

@depler

You're right - I've tried so much stuff, and since I wrote the post after the fact, I got confused on what procedure exactly worked at first. So yes, if you're going with "manual / interactive" way of applying the workaround, just going into the Tools menu and setting display mode then resolution will NOT work - what actually worked is having a ventoy/ventoy.json file on main partition setup like this:

{
    "theme": {
        "display_mode": "CLI"
    }
}

Then you boot into ventoy, go into Tools menu and just set resolution to the maximum - THAT will work (or did for me, at least).

At that point you may ask "why not just set display_mode = CLI and then put in the gfxmode setting as well?". Well, it seems grub or ventoy simply ignores the gfxmode setting when display_mode is set to "CLI", that's why I ended up hacking grub.cfg to achieve this.

Sorry for the confusion, I'll edit my post above.

[depler]

Here is my ventoy.json:

{
    "theme": {
        "display_mode": "CLI"
    }
}

I've booted into ventoy, changed resolution to 1920x1080 - at this point everything is ok (except error: not a regular file). Then I clicked at WinPE10_8_Sergei_Strelec_x86_x64_2021.07.21_English.iso and got low resolution. So this solution is not working for me.

[fernandofig]

Here is my ventoy.json:

{
  "theme": {
      "display_mode": "CLI"
  }
}

I've booted into ventoy, changed resolution to 1920x1080 - at this point everything is ok (except error: not a regular file). Then I clicked at WinPE10_8_Sergei_Strelec_x86_x64_2021.07.21_English.iso and got low resolution. So this solution is not working for me.

Oh well... I'm all out of options for you then... Sorry! :-(

FWIW, I can confirm this problem doesn't exist when using Strelec standalone on the usb drive. So while there's certainly some compatibility issue on ventoy that may or may not be fixable, I suspect Strelec is also doing something funky with video drivers, because that's the only bootable OS I have this problem with ventoy. At this point I would try to find a way to workaround the problem on SSTR side, even though that's less than ideal.

[depler]

PING

[fernandofig]

@ventoy ...ping?

[fernandofig]

bumping. FWIW, the problem persists with Ventoy 1.0.70 and latest Strelec (Jan 3rd build)

[SVz]

bump Same issue ventoy1.0.80 Strelec 10.8

[adhammagdy]

bump, I'm on ventoy 1.0.93, I faced this issue with AOMEI backupper, Acronis TrueImage, Win10XPE, and Macrium reflect. (AOMEI and Macrium are completely unusable at low resolution) It seems ventoy is preventing these ISOs from switching the resolution and giving them a fake maximum of 800x600. The ISOs are all WinPE based and they're running in UEFI mode. The solution I found was to manually add graphics drivers to each of the ISOs while creating them so that they get loaded after WinPE has booted, but this has 2 problems: it will make the ISO size significantly bigger, and not all ISOs allow adding drivers. Also I tried the CLI thing and it's a hassle because while I know the trick, other IT guys I give the USB to won't get it.

[depler]

@adhammagdy there is another workaround: download any driver pack to your fash/ssd drive (for example https://sdi-tool.org/download/). Then after booting into WinPE you can install any video driver manually and switch resolution.

[eugene-ks]

Hi! Observed the same problem with low resolution. However, it turns out that the problem is only present when the "Secure Boot Support" option is enabled. After I updated Ventoy without changing the version (I currently have 1.0.96) but with the "Secure Boot Support" option turned off, the low resolution problem disappeared.

[JtMotoX]

@eugene-ks I am using the latest version of Ventoy and I have Secure Boot turned off and still have this issue.

[AnomSanjaya]

If u still facing low resolution problem since this isssue was opened, i found the my own soluton.

I was modified the "Pecmd.ini" (i got it from strelec10x64Eng.wim WinPE file) with few commands added here after MInstLink.cmd was executed and i made the injection file where u can chain with Sergei Strelec ISO file in VentoPlugson.

The purpose this solution is forcing pecmd.exe execute installing the match video/graphics drivers and it will change to correctly screen resolution in ur devices.

Notes & disclaimer :

1. Since the "Pecmd.ini" file came from x64 WinPE file as i mentioned before, this solution will not work in x86 WinPE file, unless u must extrack Sergei Strelec ISO, edit the WinPE file with modding the "Pecmd.ini" in every WinPE file one-by-one , repack again and try it ur self.
2. Since The Sergei Strelec ISO wasn't update again in last September 2023, i dont know the video graphics driver will support in ur devices (i doubt the Nvidia drivers, the AMD Radeon APU drivers, the Intel Iris driver or any devices with dual graphics)
3. I know this solution might will not work in more devices, atleast i can help u as i can without touching any core components from Ventoy.

What if this solution will work or not, let me know... windows_injection.zip

Tested in Asus X200CA & Asus X441NA

[steve6375]

You could instead configure pecmd.ini to run PEStartup on boot. Then PEStartup could be configured to install various video drivers, reg hacks, run a change resolution utility, etc. https://rmprepusb.com/tutorials/143-modify-any-winpe-os-without-changing-the-source-files-using-pestartup/ No ISO or PE files would need to be changed or injected if you run TheOven_Startup.cmd manually. PEStartup can also change the Desktop wallpaper too and should work with most WinPE's.