As Scott points out, Aaron has made a promising start with his new Blade focused blog*
Welcome, Aaron - I’ve already found something useful on your site and may need to rethink one of my blade deployment plans slightly!
*Edited 10/2/08 to update link for Aaron’s new URL
Goal: keep a single .WIM file, Multiple instances of the same build in the .WIM file
Build001 non-sysprep’d version for maintenence with all latest patches and corp apps
Build002 sysprep but no domain for home workers/3rd party
Build003 sysprep + domain joining and scripted OOBE for corp machines
Build004…etc. tweaks to the sysprep - for different domains/customers or OOBE settings like language etc.
Build a bootable WinPE DVD with ImageX and the large .WIM file stored on it so no network connectivity required to install (at this stage) just a single DVD.
Reboot from Win PE to start Vista MiniSetup/OOBE
I hit a problem as when I restored build001 to my reference machine it wouldn’t boot and immediatley gave a 0xc000000e error
This was because my automated build DVD runs diskpart with a scripted set of commands (WIPEDISK.TXT) which includes the clean command
WIPEDISK.TXT
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=c
exit
This caused problems in this instance because The clean command erases the partition table ID.
If an image has not been-sysprep’d it still looks for the original partition table ID (which diskpart removed) hence the stop error at boot.
Sysprep’d images don’t have this problem as the “/generalize” switch resets this dependency on the partition table entries and mini-setup runs at 1st boot to fix it up.
So, if you need to do maintenance on a non-sysprep’d reference image then
Rinse and repeat.
Thanks to this post http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1099145&SiteID=17 and this post http://www.svrops.com/svrops/articles/winvistape2.htmI figured it out…eventually!
I need a DVD that automatically applies a .WIM image when WinPE boots - no prompts; just want to press F9 for the BIOS Boot menu and walk away until build is finished.
I built a WinPE 2.0 image the usual way, but I want to add files to it (easy with PowerISO) but I want it to do something when it starts up..
To do this I had to customise the BOOT.WIM file which you use to generate your WinPE ISO file, note you need to edit BOOT.WIM not the WinPE.WIM file.
I used the /MOUNTRW switch for imageX (more details here) to mount the BOOT.WIM file - if you look in it’s WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 directory there is a file called STARTNET.CMD - this is mostly the same as a batch file so you can put whatever commands you want in here, in my case I edited it as follows;
wpeinit
CALL D:\tools\buildPC.bat
wpeutil reboot
Once the changes are made you can save the changes back using the /UNMOUNT and /COMMIT switches - you’ll then need to rebuild the Windows PE .ISO using OSCDIMG.EXE.
You can then inject files into the .ISO file you’ve generated - you could put them in the BOOT.WIM as above but its quicker and easier to do this via PowerISO (or similar tool) if you are going to need to make changes, rather than recompiling the BOOT.WIM and .ISO files.
This is the BUILDPC.BAT batch file that STARTNET.CMD calls, it prepares the disk and deploys the image file to the local HDD.
@echo off
diskpart /s d:\sources\wipedisk.txt
d:
cd\tools
Echo applying image
imagex.exe /apply d:\sources\MasterImageFile.wim 1 C:
Echo Image Downloaded, rebooting.
Save the file and burn.. job done.
It’s a good idea to use a virtual machine to test the .ISO file out - and is cheaper than wasting lots of DVD/CD-R’s while you are fine-tuning!
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