Logs for WinPE Bare Metal

SUMMARY

This article describes how to find the logs on the WinPE Bare Metal Media.

ISSUE

You boot from the Win PE Bare Metal Boot media on a VM or physical host after having created the media from a Windows Machine, and receive errors. There are several common causes of errors with Bare Metal booting.  Most are network related and are easily resolved with a few simple steps.  Reading the log files can provide good insight into the specific issue. 

To troubleshoot bare metal errors, perform the following:

1. Once the Win PE media boots, click the “Diagnostic Tools” icon followed by the “View Logs” Icon. 
2. Logs for Windows Bare Metal in the PE media are located in z:\PCBP\logs.dir.  You should see this directory displayed in the top left box of the log view window.  Double click the logs.dir directory and you will then see logs listed in the bottom left box.  Clicking a log file will reveal its contents in the central pane.
3. The Winbm_0.log file will reveal driver level or IP related information.  If you perform a Bare Metal Hardware Confirmation, results of this test will appear at the end of this log.  This log is written to continuously while you are in the interface. 
4. Once driver and network level issues are resolved, and a connection to the recovery system is made, restore logs are called wbps_#.log and will appear in this same location.