[GUIDE] Creating WIM images of Windows for system deployment using PE

[IcemanND]

Long ago in a land far, far, away....oh wait wrong story, but close, I wrote the tutorial here on MSFN for using Vista PE (PE 2.0) to image XP using WIMs. Well here is the updated document using Windows 7. While originally tailored to imaging Windows XP, the same process applies for imaging Vista and Windows 7.

As always if you have additions, changes, find errors, etc. let me know and I'll update as appropriate and give credit where due.

Creating WIM Images for System Deployment Using Windows 7 PE 3.0.pdf

Link to Vista PE post: http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__674778

[Tripredacus]

Your local spellchecker here for you!

On page 13, your 2 partition diskpart script, you have the second partition (the one with E: ) to get drive label="CDRIVE" the same as the first partition which actually is the C drive!

However as an alternate script to deal with the CD-ROM drive letter being there, you could also do this:

sel vol d
assign letter=e

As with deploying a stored Windows 7 image, you do not need to give the system reserved a drive letter. Since a Windows 7 WIM is stored sysprepped, it will automatically take care of the System Reserved partition on reboot. So a good scenario to redeploy a Windows 7 image would be to NOT assign a letter to the system reserved partition, and make the OS volume get the C drive. Also, the OS volume should be active, not the system reserved partition. But obviously your example will put a System Reserved partition and the rest of the drive a Logical Volume... Can Windows boot from a Logical Volume? Here is my (modified) Windows 7 example:

sel disk 0
clean
create part pri size=5000
format fs=ntfs quick label="system"
create part pri
sel part 2
active
format fs=ntfs quick label="OS"
assign letter=c
exit

A couple notes. After creating the first partition, you do not need to do "SEL PART 1" because it will be selected automatically. This is only for the first partition. If you do a LIST PART after creating the partition, you can see it is going to be selected already.

[kyor]

Thanks IcemanND

good job

[IcemanND]

Tripredacus - thinking I should just add another page to deal specifically with Windwos 7 and the system reserved partition. If you look at the sample script for windows 7 dual partition you see that both partitions are primary partitions. If you make the OS partition the active during sysprep does it modify the reserved partition to hold the boot info or does it place it on the os partition since that is the bootable partition? In my experiences so far i has ignored the reserved parititon altogether which is why I run bcdboot to recreate the BCD records on the appropriate partition.

[Tripredacus]

When capturing a sysprepped Win7 image, I only capture the volume the OS is on. I do not capture the system reserved partition. It should work that way, even if you do not create the system reserved partition. I'm not really sure because all my images have WinRE partition in them.

You should run bcdboot regardless.

[IcemanND]

That's the next thing I'll be playing with is WinRE.

I know it works the way I have it documented for which partition is set to active as that is how all of my systems are done so I will leave the document as is for that right now. I'll work on adding another page dealing specificaly with WIndows 7 and the reserved partition etc for those using it.

[expert_1st]

Thanks IcemanND!

[geemail.email]

IcemanND,

First, thank you for the updated WinPE 3.0 guide, I am using it as a launching point of Ghost images via an HTA.

One item to note. In your documentation, when adding the packages, I have to revise the following and highlighted my revisions shown in bold.

Set DestFolder=c:\winpe_x86\mount

Set PackageSource="c:\program files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\Winpe_FPs"

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-HTA.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\winpe-hta_en-us.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-MDAC.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\winpe-mdac_en-us.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-PPPoE.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\winpe-PPPOE_en-us.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-Scripting.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\winpe-scripting_en-us.cab

rem dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-SRT.cab

rem dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\WinPE-SRT.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-WMI.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\winpe-wmi_en-us.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\WinPE-WDS-Tools.cab

dism /image:%DestFolder% /Add-Package /PackagePath:%PackageSource%\en-us\winpe-wds-tools_en-us.cab

It appears since your original documenation, the name of the CAB files located in the EN folder have all been appended with "_en-us"

Also, I did not find any CAB files in either directory for WinPE-SRT.

Thanks,

Geemail

[Tripredacus]

It isn't a requirement to install the en-us cabs... or at least I never ran into a situation where NOT installing them caused a problem.

I can see the winpe-srt_en-us.cab, but I do not have the WAIK so it may not be present there. Either way, you only need the SRT package if you are creating a recovery partition for use on a Vista or Server 2008 (not R2) system. You could probably use SRT for a Windows 7 recovery partition, but it technically doesn't need it.

[IcemanND]

It depends upon what you are doing from WinPE whether you need the language add-on or not. If all you are doing is Ghost then you probably don't need any of the additional packs added. I use my WinPE thumbdrives for image deployment, system recovery, data recovery, malware removal and more so I add all of them except the WinPE-SRT to my boot image.

[geemail.email]

It depends upon what you are doing from WinPE whether you need the language add-on or not. If all you are doing is Ghost then you probably don't need any of the additional packs added. I use my WinPE thumbdrives for image deployment, system recovery, data recovery, malware removal and more so I add all of them except the WinPE-SRT to my boot image.

I am using an HTA which makes several remote tools available and also uses XML and VBScripts to read the Ghost Console directory structure and offers a list of available images from which to choose.

Thanks again

[VoodooV]

So what is the deal with the SRT package? I know it was witheld from the Vista AIK, but why isn't it included in Win7 or in the supplement?

So how do you go about adding WinRE functionality to a WinPE 3.X image? I've got a good set of WinPE files going, PGP encryption, secure deletion, etc. and I'd like to expand the usefulness of WinPE by adding these recovery tools. I tried adding WinPE-SRT_en-us.cab which is part of the AIK but it won't let me. so I assume I need to have WinPE-SRT.cab.

It's my understanding that a WinRE base image is pretty similar to a base WinPE image so am I just better served by creating a WinRE image and adding all my customizations to that instead of WinPE?

[Tripredacus]

WinRE should just give you the binaries to run RECENV.EXE. I haven't tried that package so I'm not sure.