How can I install Windows 7 using WinPE?

Question

I made a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk on a USB Flash Disk by following the instructions in Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk on a USB Flash Disk. Now, I want to install a new Windows 7 from a .wim file, but I have no idea how to do it. Should I move the .wim file to the USB flash disk? And what should I type in? I have searched for a tutorial, but I didn't find anything.

Answer 1

1. You will need to make sure you've included the following tools in your WinPE: imagex, bcdboot, and bcdedit.

2. Prepare the hard disk using diskpart or some other partition editor. Here is an example of what I use, but you will need to change this depending on your situation. The important part is to create a a primary partition, format it as NTFS, make it active, and assign it a drive letter (doesn't matter what you assign it, it's only for while you're in the Win PE session).

   select disk
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=ntfs label=Windows7 quick
   assign letter=Z
   

3. Use imagex to apply/extract the .wim to the hard drive.

   imagex /apply yourwimfile.wim 1 Z:\ 
   

4. Use bcdboot to install the boot loader.

   bcdboot Z:\
   

5. This step may not be neccessary, but if you had Windows 7 installed before, then you may have some extra OS entries on the boot screen. You can use bcdedit /enum to list them, and then delete the extras passsing the respective "resumeobject" UID to bcdedit /delete like so...

   bcdedit /delete {ddc1083f-afa7-11df-a8f3-000c290801cf} /cleanup
   

6. Reboot and cross your fingers.

Answer 2

Rather than doing all that work by hand, you should look into setting up a deployment share with MDT 2012 or 2013. The scripts it comes with do all the work with DISM and IMAGEX and BCDEDIT for you. It will save you a lot of time. It'll do all the driver injection, PC naming, windows updates, and domain joining for you.

MDT will build the WinPE ISOs from a GUI for you as well, so it'll make your life easier.

If you build a reference image in a VM, it'll run on just about anything, MDT will do all the drivers for you, it's the only way to go these days, that is unless you like doing manual image build on multiple makes and models.

Check out deploymentartist.com for the MDT lite touch unleashed video series for more info.