WDS and editing boot.wim

[brandon6976]

Hey guys I have what hopefully might be an easy question. I'm using the WDS server here at my org and we've got some new IBM's which the boot.wim that is on the vista DVD doesn't have drivers for. I have the drivers and have loaded them onto a wim file that boots to a command prompt. However if I set that as my boot.wim for the WDS server I don't get the nice menu to choose my image file and all that.

What makes it worse is that the boot.wim that does work with the nice menu and such I can't seem to add the drivers because if I do I get the "The image directory specified is a Windows PE image that was previously prepared with the /PREP command." message. Is there a way to re-create that boot.wim where I can add the drivers and still use the full GUI that my SD guys are used to ?

Any help is appreciated.

[zorphnog]

How were you trying to add the drivers to the original WIM? You should be using the /inf switch for PEImg which is still available even after a /prep command has been issued. Should look something like: peimg /inf=c:\mydevice.inf c:\winpe_x86\mount\windows

[brandon6976]

yep I was doing it just as you posted above. However I copied the boot.wim from the Vista dvd. Does that make a difference ?? I notice if I create the wim the way the documentation shows you by typing "copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86" it creates it and I can add the drivers however it boots to the command prompt.

Is there something special about the boot.wim taken from the Vista DVD that can be replicated?

[zorphnog]

I've never tried doing it, but you should be able to add the drivers to the original wim. Do the following, where c:\vistadvd\boot.wim is the original wim:

mkdir C:\vistadvd\mount
imagex /mountrw C:\vistadvd\boot.wim 1 C:\vistadvd\mount
peimg /inf=C:\IBMdrivers\driver-01.inf C:\vistadvd\mount\Windows
peimg /inf=C:\IBMdrivers\driver-02.inf C:\vistadvd\mount\Windows
...
peimg /inf=C:\IBMdrivers\driver-NN.inf C:\vistadvd\mount\Windows
imagex /commit /unmount C:\vistadvd\mount

Unless they are a using CRC or some other type of file corruption detection method on the WIM file, that should work.

Edited February 19, 2008 by zorphnog

[brandon6976]

I've never tried doing it, but you should be able to add the drivers to the original wim. Do the following, where c:\vistadvd\boot.wim is the original wim:

mkdir C:\vistadvd\mount
imagex /mountrw C:\vistadvd\boot.wim 1 C:\vistadvd\mount
peimg /inf=C:\IBMdrivers\driver-01.inf C:\vistadvd\mount\Windows
peimg /inf=C:\IBMdrivers\driver-02.inf C:\vistadvd\mount\Windows
...
peimg /inf=C:\IBMdrivers\driver-NN.inf C:\vistadvd\mount\Windows
imagex /commit /unmount C:\vistadvd\mount

Unless they are a using CRC or some other type of file corruption detection method on the WIM file, that should work.

yeah you were totally right. I was using /install rather than /inf. I didn't realize you could use INF. I also had to mount 2 rather than 1 as its got 2. Thanks for the help man !