7Customizer - a Windows 7 Customization and Deployment tool

[blue4603]

Hi,

7Customizer is a tool for creating customizing and deploying Windows 7 installation (both 32bit and 64bit editions). It works on both English and non English installation sources.

Follow the development of 7Customizer on Twitter. Click here.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE Since this thread is now sticky it will draw more attention. It will also draw repetitive posts that reports the same problem.

Before you post in this thread: Read the first post of this thread(the one you are reading right now) first and then read the visual guide here. Then if you find a problem or bug report it in this thread.

7Customizer is still in development stages and it is still in testing phase. It might not work for you or crash with error. If that happens report it in this thread.

Note: This thread is dedicated for debugging and testing and discussing issues related to 7Customizer only. If you need help regarding DISM or regarding a certain problem in a driver you wish to integrate or anything that is not related to 7Customizer , you should post your problem in the appropriate forum.

Note: Read about 7Customizer components XML here

Table of Content:

1. Functions and features

2. Screen shots

3. Requirements

4. Important notes

5. Other notes

6. Known bugs

7. Reporting bugs

8. Using 7Customizer in XP

9. To do list for current release

10. To do list for future releases

11. Feature that are not likely to be implemented

12. Making a bootable USB with customized Windows 7.

13. Guides

14. License Agreement

15. Version History

1. Functions and features:

The functions that are implemented and tested by me and the forum members are:

1. Languages integration (Windows UI language not the setup language)

2. Updates integration

3. Basic unattended installation

4. Driver integration

5. Tweaks

6. Services

7. ISO Creation

8. Presets

9. UAC trigger

10. Clean mount folder

11. Wallpapers integration

Implemented but still need testing:

12. Themes integration

13. Windows 7 Enterprise edition support

2. Screen shots

3.Requirements:

1. Windows Vista or Windows 7. (32 bit or 64 bit)

2. WAIK for Windows 7 (here). You could use WAIK in any language (English,German, Italian ,...... etc)

3. Windows installation source.

To use 7Customizer just extract the files and start 7customizer.exe

4. Important notes for using 7Customizer:

1. Make sure you have enough free space (at least 5 GB of free space is recommended) in your drive where 7Customizer is located (7Customizer will warn you if the drive does not have sufficient space)

2. It is highly recommended to run the program in a folder that does not have white spaces for example, c:\7Customizer\.

3. It is highly recommended to place your installation source in a directory that does not have white spaces for example, c:\win7.

4. When choosing the path for ImageX and DISM, make sure you choose the same exe architecture (x86 or amd64) as your Windows.

eg when using Windows 7 x64 choose the ImageX located in amd64 inside the WAIK installation.

5. Always test the result in a virtual machine first (VirtualBox, VMware player or VirtualPc).

6. It is highly recommended to use 7Customizer on an unmodified (clean,untouched .. etc) windows installation source.

7. It is highly recommended to place 7Customizer in the root folder (e.g D:\7customizer). It is not recommended to place 7Customizer in your home directory folders (e.g. Documents,Desktop,... etc).

5. Other notes:

1. The languages you integrate are not for the setup part. It is for the Windows UI.

2. The keyboard, date ,currency and time zone ,in the unattended part, are not for the setup part. They are used for the user settings after the installation is done.

3. Fill the whole information in the unattended part or the setup will fail.

4. Always integrate drivers that supports Windows 7. Drivers that does not support Windows 7 might not be integrated properly or might not be integrated at all.

5. If you face issues integrating drivers, these issues are related to DISM not 7Customizer. Do not report these issues. I can not help you with that.

6. 7Customizer does not support Windows Server 2008. I am not planning to support it. However, if I plan to support it, it will be after finishing 7customizer.

7. When removing components, the resulting ISO's size might not decrease. However the installation size of Windows 7 will decrease.

6. Known bugs

1. 7Customizer sometimes fails to read the images information correctly (This is related to using 7Customizer on a modified installation source)(This issue is still not solved, if you still face this problem attach your log.zip).

2. When selecting updates 7Customizer, some time you will be able to select one update only. If you select more than one update 7Customizer will crash.(This issue is solved in 0.4.4 but it is still not tested).

7. Reporting bugs

Before you report a bug make sure you read the requirements and important notes and known bugs.

When you report a bug please provide the following info:

You must post the log file (log.zip) created by 7Customizer. This will help track the problem. The log file is inside the work folder.

1. Any information that you think it is useful

2. Screen-shot

3. When posting your autounattend.xml do not forget to remove your product key.

4. All the information ,screen-shot ...etc should be in ENGLISH.

8. Using 7Customizer in XP

Note: I have tested 7Customizer in Windows XP. It did not work well.

7Customizer is developed and tested in Windows vista or 7. I will not test nor support 7Customizer under XP because WAIK for 7 does not support XP (This is from Microsoft). However to use 7Customizer in XP you will need two tools: DISM and ImageX.

1. To get dism in xp, jaclaz has posted a link to install dism on XP (it is in the first page of this thread).

2. To get ImageX in xp, download and install WAIK for Vista.

You could also Google for this and you might find an easier way.

9. To do list for 0.5.x release

Removing components.

Add more components to be removed.

Fix any pending issues that were reported by the users.

Update the visual guide.

10. To do list for future releases:(in no particular order)

Make a setup for 7Customizer

Select default wallpaper

remove themes and wallpapers from the list

Command line interface

Adding applications

Join workgroup/domain

A list of last selected installation sources

An option to set the Users folder location, program files locations and other folders.

Check if 7Customizer can be supported under XP.

Check whether the start orb could be replaced or not.

uxtheme patch.

OEM branding.

integrate icons.

11. Feature that are not likely to be implemented

Progress bar instead of the command line progress (not likely because the whole execution is done through the command line)

Partition disk (not likely to be implemented)

Burn ISO to DVD(not likely because they are lots of programs that burn iso to DVD)

When saving the image, include all the editions (Rebuild all as in vlite or stefanRTR's win integrator)

Integrating languages in the setup part. (It is really unnecessary).

12. Making a bootable USB with customized Windows 7

To make a USB from the customized Windows 7, use WinToFlash (Click here) .

To make a bootable USB, it requires an empty flash drive (If you have files in the flash drive, WinToFlash will erase them).

Start the wizard in WinToFlash and give it the directory where the customized Windows is located and the flash drive directory and click Next.

It will do its job, when it finishes you will have a bootable USB flash drive with your customized Windows 7.

13. Guides

English Visual Guide click here .

German guide click here (by beatmaster).

Japanese guide click here (by DH.Omega).

French guide click here (by myselfidem).

Italian guide click here (by ascatem)

Swedish guide click here (by grabben)

Spanish guide Click here

14. License Agreement: (blah blah blah)

7Customizer is a freeware tool. You could use it only for any personal non-commercial purposes.

15. Version History:

===v0.5.0 Beta 1=== 18 March 2011

Added: Components removal.

Added: 7Customizer will create a log.zip file that will contain all the info I need to fix the issues. So if you face a problem attach the log.zip.

Updated: 7Customizer requires .net framework 3.0. That means it will run directly in Windows Vista.

Note: 7Customizer 0.5 is a beta release. I am releasing it to show you how I am implementing "components removal" using components.xml which I will write a post about it.

===v0.5.0a=== 6 October 2011

Update: Fixed an issue reported by justibus where the file in the components.bat are not surrounded by quotes.

===v0.5.0b=== 6 November 2011

Update: Fixed an issue reported by justibus where the components tree wasn't build correctly.

Added: More components submitted by justibus.

===v0.5.0c=== 9 November 2011

Added: An option to disable verifying deletion of files, which drastically reduces the amount of time to build the customized image.

Added: More components submitted by justibus.

7Customizer_0.5.0b was downloaded 75 times

7Customizer_0.5.0a was downloaded 785times

7Customizer_0.5.0 was downloaded 3675 times

Regards

7Customizer_0.4.4.rar

7Customizer_0.5.0c.rar

7customizer changelog.txt

Edited November 9, 2011 by blue4603

[jaclaz]

If there is interest in this tool and some intersets in helping me in developing this tool, I will continue developing. If not i will just continue until I get bored

Later if it gets some attention, I will release the source code

Regards

Sure there is interest in such a tool.

A good start before releasing the source code would be to release the actual app, instead of a couple of screenshots...

With all due respect , I doubt that even the few features implemented are actually tested extensively , until you release it and let people play a bit with it.

jaclaz

[r0sWell]

i'm 99% sure that a lot of people are waiting for a vlite replacement

if with your tool it's possible to easily slim down the size of the Win7 source (or parts of it), i'm very interested in too B)

[nujackk]

I too would like to voice my interest. Doubt I could be of much help in development other then a tester. But figured I should show my support

[blue4603]

A good start before releasing the source code would be to release the actual app, instead of a couple of screenshots...

Just give me a couple of days so I could finish the unattended part.

With all due respect , I doubt that even the few features implemented are actually tested extensively rolleyes.gif , until you release it and let people play a bit with it.

I meant that I have tested it on my test machine and later on I will give it to the people to test it.

i'm 99% sure that a lot of people are waiting for a vlite replacement newwink.gif

if with your tool it's possible to easily slim down the size of the Win7 source (or parts of it), i'm very interested in too cool.gif

The slimming part will come later on.

I too would like to voice my interest. Doubt I could be of much help in development other then a tester. But figured I should show my support

Thanks in advance

Regards

[Chester^]

Def interested!

[1to1]

Keep on the good Work Brother.!!

best regards.

[MrJinje]

I could possibly help out, what language are you programming in.

As for the removal of packages, have an idea for that, but don't think Install_WIM_Tweak.exe is working with DISM currently, so we would either have to mount/unmount with the Vista WAIK imagex, or need re-write a new Install_WIM_Tweak.exe to work with DISM

Basic idea was populate a simple tree-view / Check Box control just like vLite or WUD with the package listing from DISM /GET-PACKAGES command.

What do you think ?

[filmbot]

I'd be very interested in this. Coming from working with nLite extensively and having to try and find the same power for Win7 in WAIK has been nothing but a headache. Hopefully this gets released.

[Octopuss]

Great! I was about to start exploring Se7en_UA tool some other member posted few weeks ago, but this looks very promising!

[blue4603]

I could possibly help out, what language are you programming in.

As for the removal of packages, have an idea for that, but don't think Install_WIM_Tweak.exe is working with DISM currently, so we would either have to mount/unmount with the Vista WAIK imagex, or need re-write a new Install_WIM_Tweak.exe to work with DISM

Basic idea was populate a simple tree-view / Check Box control just like vLite or WUD with the package listing from DISM /GET-PACKAGES command.

What do you think ?

I am using C#.

To mount and and commit and service the image, I use imagex and dism from the windows 7 WAIK. That means this program should not work on XP since WAIK for 7 does not support XP (Sorry this problem is from Microsoft).

Regarding the packages I think we could look into that later. Because I want to finish these functions:

1. Integrate Language (Done)

2. Integrate Updates (Done)

3. Basic Unattended

The tool should know what updates and languages are already installed (You could call this a function two)

After that I will give the program to the people to test it and then implement other functions

@Chester^,@1to1,@filmbot,@TheWalrus

Thanks for your interest

Regards

[jaclaz]

To mount and and commit and service the image, I use imagex and dism from the windows 7 WAIK. That means this program should not work on XP since WAIK for 7 does not support XP (Sorry this problem is from Microsoft).

Not really.

JFYI:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9113

jaclaz

[clavicle]

@blue4603

Definitely this program could become the most wanted one. But certainly this board is full of enthusiasts and beta testers who will test endlessly to make this program a real worthy one. All the best!

[Stoner81]

Defo interested in this myself!

[blue4603]

Not really. newwink.gif

JFYI:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=9113

jaclaz

Oh, thanks for the info. Although it can run on XP, all my testing will be on a vista machine with WAIK for 7. So if someone will use it on XP, he should setup DISM and ImageX on XP because the tool uses both of them.

To make things clear: I will develop this tool and test it only on vista and later 7.

@clavicle, @Stoner81

Thanks for your interest

Regards

Edited October 26, 2009 by blue4603