Everything on a Strelec USB lives inside one folder: SSTR. Understand its layout and you can add drivers, drop in your own programs, automate startup jobs and update the toolkit — without ever breaking the boot.
Open a working Strelec stick and you will see one big folder at the root: SSTR. That folder is the toolkit — the boot files point into it, the programs live in it, and every customisation the author allows happens inside it. This guide maps the important subfolders: where the tools live, where your own files belong, and which folders to never touch if you want the stick to keep booting.
The SSTR folder holds the WinPE images, the program collection and the configuration that ties them together. The golden rule: never rename SSTR, never move it, and never delete files from it because they look unused. The boot process looks for this exact name at the root of the drive. If you copy a Strelec setup to another stick or disk, copy the whole SSTR folder as one piece.
Treat SSTR like the Windows folder on a normal PC — you add things in the places designed for it, and you leave the machinery alone.
Inside SSTR sits a USER folder, and this is your personal space on the stick. Its most important resident is the drivers area — the MY_DRIVERS_x64 subfolder under SSTR\USER on current builds — where storage, network and WLAN drivers you drop in are installed automatically during boot. There is room here for your own documents and tools as well.
.inf, .sys and .cat files together, not an .exe installerThe MInst folder feeds the MInstAll program manager — the catalogue window on the Strelec taskbar that lists every bundled tool with checkboxes and categories. The programs themselves and their launch data live under this structure. Two practical consequences:
Saved Wi-Fi profiles also connect through this area — exported WLAN profiles placed in the MInst WLAN profile folder are imported automatically at boot, a quiet time-saver on repeat jobs.
The bat folder inside SSTR holds command and batch files that run as WinPE starts. Technicians use it to map a network drive automatically or launch a favourite tool on boot. One careless line here can stall every boot, so edit these files only with a backup copy saved first.
The download also supports loading WinPE from a hard disk: extract the SSTR folder to a disk and use the included Add Boot Menu material to add a permanent rescue entry to a PC's boot menu — powerful for a workshop machine, and a change you should only make on PCs you own.
Every step shown live on a real PC — download, USB creation and the full Strelec toolkit tour.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes. On a Rufus or included-tool build, keep personal files in the SSTR\USER area or a clearly named folder of your own at the root — just never inside the toolkit's own program folders. On a Ventoy stick, extra ISOs simply sit at the root next to the Strelec image.
The usual cause is the driver format: Strelec loads unpacked driver packages — the .inf with its .sys and .cat files — not .exe installers. Extract the driver package first, keep each device in its own subfolder under the drivers area of SSTR\USER, and reboot the PE so it picks them up at startup.
Yes — copying the complete SSTR folder to the root of another correctly prepared bootable stick is exactly how technicians clone their setup. Copy it whole, including the USER folder, so your added drivers and programs travel with it.