GBossN4eVr

Thanks to both of you for the replies and yes indeed I know of and use quite frequently vhds both as filedisk and ram but that is not what I am asking about. If I wasn't very clear before the only reason I applied the boot.wim from Pe to VHD was I thought I could make changes they would be saved then I would just convert the vhd back to boot.wim and voila but I was very wrong since I tried that and many more scenarios. I had read somewhere while googling that it was possible to load registry entries into a PE/boot.wim using DISM/Wintoolkit by loading the hives from %systemroot%/Windows/system32/config folder in the boot.wim and add the necessary .reg entries so I did but when I booted the ISO I get blue screen saying PC ran into difficulties need to restart each time. I used Regshot to see the hives which were modified after making a few changes in the PE then exported those hives (HKLM Software, Sustem & HKU) and loaded them as I mentioned before since they are too many lines to export singularly. I have read about startnet.cmd, Win8.1.cfg & also about autounattend.xml files that can be used to import or make changes to PE while it is booting or after whether it is a program/script/.reg file that you want to run but I have no previous experience with editing or adding lines or creating these files and since the other approaches won't work I thought I would ask the experts here or those with previous experience to help. The main reasons are I have added the up to date Display Driver to the Pe but when I boot the screen is not at the right resolution and I have to make the changes each time I boot the PE also I have to continually enter my Wireless password when I want to use Wifi which isn't much fun considering how long it is as far as adding programs I am not too worried about that stuff just yet. Please tell me someone can help!

Hello to one and all of you who are so helpful and kind with there time and expertise sharing with those lesser knowledgeable people on this forum such as myself. I have a Winpe8.1x64.ISO with quite a few preinstalled as well as portable apps which are very useful and most of the programs I use on regular windows work when installed in while using the said PE OS, what I want to know is how can I make the changes, programs and registry settings persistent so I wouldn't need to install or edit them each time I use the PE. I have already done DISM to include necessary drivers, I have also tried using Regshot, exporting the entire PE registry and also the Hives which were modified or changed and added them using Wintoolkit to boot.wim but when I boot the ISO with the updated boot.wim it didn't boot was asking for "winload.exe" which suggested the registry entries I added somehow messed with the building/booting process of the ISO. I have also tried applying boot.wim to a vhd which worked and booted but each time I boot the vhd a new administrator account is created e.g "administrator.001, administrator.002" and so on are added to the "Users" folder in the system root so even if the changes were saved basically a new account is used each time I boot. I was thinking that if I boot into the original ISO make the necessary changes i.e (install programs, pin to taskbar/startmenu, wireless password and so on) I could then export the entire registry, then add the exported .reg file to the PE ISO and during or after boot run a script/command to add/merge the .reg file to the registry therefore all the necessary changes would be there after booting into the PE and I wouldn't need to retype my wireless password and so on over and over but I don't know how to do that. In a nutshell I would basically like to know if there is anyway to get an applied boot.wim image from PE to vhd persistent (to load saved changes), what is the best way to add registry settings to a boot.wim or how to load an entire/part of the registry after booting a PE ISO? Sorry about such a long post I hope it was explained thoroughly enough. Please Help!

In case I misinterpreted I also ran winntsetup to install the aforementioned W7 to my HD and got the same results blinking "_" in the left corner. I am no expert but either the updated "Wnt" [short for Winntsetup2 x86x64] is not compatible with this version of Windows 7 I am using or something I have no clue about because if I install W7 to the same partition on the HD which I have done many times before it installs and runs as it should. Another thing that seems odd is if I create a VHD with Wnt and then rather than use Wnt I try to install to the same VHD using setup from the mounted W7 Ultimate ISO it says setup can't run on the drive/partition, isn't a VHD capable of being installed to without using Wnt?

If I install my Win 7 Ultimate x64 on HD it installs just fine but that is not what I want to do. As I mentioned before I have used an older version of Winntsetup2 before with the exact same ISO and it worked without any hitches or glitches that I can remember, my bios is set to default as it always has even when I was still booting to the VHDs I had before I deleted them to create new ones. I have always done my VHDs using a WinPE OS so I have no clue what the problem could quite possibly be now. The Windows 7 I use and have always used is Windows 7 Ultimate SP0 64-Bit en-US (Build 6.1.7600.16385). Btw I was wondering if by some chance someone could upload an older version of Winntsetup I think the one I used to use was 2.2 or somewhere along that region. Thank You!

Thanks for the reply as I should have probably said before I have used the same Windows 7 with an older Winntsetup before but I haven't needed to use it for some time until I recently decided to create new ones and I saw there was a newer version of winntsetup so I decided to use the latest update I found here. I deleted the older version I had used previously since I didn't think I would need it. My exact steps are mounted the Win 7 Ultimate x86 x64 iso I have saved on a HDD then proceeded to make VHD with Winntsetup then did a couple tweaks made sure the boot drive is primary and set to active then ran setup which completed but when I reboot I either get error message or blinking "_" in the left corner so my guess is that it is something to do with the newer Winntsetup which to me seems odd. I also tried to run setup from the mounted Win 7 iso to install to a freshly created VHD made with Winntsetup but it says setup can't run on the drive. Hope this answers your question and makes it more clearer.

Btw I run Wnt in a Win 7 Pe I do not have Win7 installed on hard drive.

Hi first of all I want to congratulate and thank all of the people admins and general users for such an awesome insightful post. I am new here but I have been using Winntsetup for awhile but I recently deleted most of my Win7 VHDs so I decided to use the newer Winntsetup instead of an older one I used to use. The problem is for some reason with this newer I will call 'Wnt' for short 2.3.6.3 all I get after setup is completed and reboot is a black screen and "_" blinking in the upper left corner and nothing happens. The install Wim I use is from Win7 Ultimate x86 x64 and I have a x64 system if that helps. I ran it a couple times with varying results before I got Windows setup could not complete with this hardware and couple other times I got Windows error cannot complete setup restart and install again. Please Help!