[Upgrade folder on Vista DVD]

I can't seem to find any docs on the Upgrade folder. According to an article by Paul Thurrott it should be a simple drag-and-drop scenario.

Anyone luckier?

[Vista QFE slipstreaming]

Nice job the unknown, though you may also wanna check out http://winbeta.org/comments.php?id=6260&catid=1 which I put up earlier today which follows a similar idea to what you did and is a followup to the original article. The update pack has the msu's/UE cabs/imagex/peimg/cdimage etc. all included as well as is able to update the whole iso (all the images in the wim) and rebuild it, except I haven't tested it with 64-Bit yet, since I haven't had a chance to dl the 64-Bit hotfixes nor to install Vista x64.

Thanks Arneh, seems like i reinvented your wheel Anyway, tested your solution and it works great for creating a baseline dvd image for Vista installs!

After this i can recapture the install to my own WIM file and use peimg to add MSU/CAB packages of newer updates to the offline image.

Only thing that concerns me is the Malicious Software Removal Tool MSRT which needs a quiet install during setup or first boot. I am looking for a way to offline service my images without having to go through windows setup every time MS releases a new version of their MSRT.

The best situation would be that, since MSRT is an .exe which needs to install itself, the user gets it automatically installed at first run of the computer, so after the resealing proces. In this way I can just update the mrt.exe file with the latest version and when the user boots the system in OOBE it will get installed.

However, when you sysprep /generalize the system in Audit mode the synchronous commands in the oobeSystem phase of yourr autounattend.xml will be ignored and MSRT will not get installed! If anyone knows how to fix this and how to pass on Firstrun commands to a system after generalization, any help is greatly appreciated.

Workaround for now is to install MSRT during auditSystem phase. However this implies that i have to generalize the system with the tool already installed which makes offline servicing quite difficult.

[Vista QFE slipstreaming]

For those who like to give it a try with the peimg.exe method...

I created a batch file to automate some stuff. Just put your MSU's in one directory together and run from there. The batch file expands, adds and installs your updates and commits the changes to your image file.

Ofcourse change the variables to reflect your environment. Good luck

set __WimImage=d:\pe20\wim\vista.wim
set __WimMountPath=d:\pe20\wim\mount
set __WindowsDir=%__WimMountPath%\windows

rem	*** install.wim SKU's: 1=Business 2=HomeBasic 3=HomePremium 4=Ultimate
set __Index=1

rem	*** Expand msu files and copy cabinets for integration
mkdir expand
expand -F:* .\*.msu .\expand
mkdir integrate
xcopy .\expand\Windows6.0*.cab .\integrate
rmdir .\expand /s /q

rem	*** Mount WIM image and process updates
imagex /mountrw %__WimImage% %__Index% %__WimMountPath%
peimg %__WindowsDir% /import=.\integrate\*.cab

rem	*** Install updates
peimg /install=*Package* %__WindowsDir%

rem	*** Creat resultlog
peimg /list /image=%__WindowsDir% >.\result.txt

rem	*** Commit changes
imagex /commit /unmount %__WimMountPath%
rmdir .\integrate /s /q

[Vista QFE slipstreaming]

An article at: http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?id=6244&catid=1 describes the use of peimg.exe instead of Package Manager. I tried this method and it seems to work fine. Just mount your install.wim or custom captured image, expand your MSU's, add and install the cabinet files with peimg and commit changes.

You can even use wildcards with this tool to make life even easier and add a bunch of hotfixes at once!

In this way the QFE hotfixes are not placed in a cache folder but integrated in the image. They will not show up in the user's history of updates, but are listed in add/remove programs.

I don't know about any side effects using a WinPE tool like peimg.exe for a "full" Vista image though... Any comments on that are appreciated!