WinPE

Microsoft: "Windows PE (WinPE) for Windows 10 is a small operating system used to install, deploy, and repair Windows 10"

This is a custom script that runs when Windows PE boots. It gives a convenient menu to easily capture and deploy Windows images.

Features

• Simple menu for capturing and deploying Windows images.
• Deploy with one click, script automatically partitions drive and writes image to disk.
• Works with UEFI or BIOS.
• Create a full disk backup with 7z. (needs some work)

Setup

Perequisites

• Windows PE files. Download the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK)
  • Make sure you have selected Deployment tools
  • if you have Windows 1809 make sure to download the Windows PE add-on
• The files from this repository

Create working Files

1. Start Deployment and Imaging tools Environment as admin.
2. Run copype to create a directory to work from. This will only boot on 64-bit machines.
   • copype amd64 C:\WinPE
3. Mount WinPE to allow making changes.
   • Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:"C:\WinPE\media\sources\boot.wim" /index:1 /MountDir:"C:\WinPE\mount"
4. Copy and replace files from repo to "C:\WinPE\mount\Windows\System32".

Unmount and commit changes

1. Use Dism to unmount and commit changes
   • Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"C:\WinPE\mount" /commit

Create Bootable Media

Bootable USB Drive

Windows PE uses Fat32, so the maximum file size is only 4 GB. Typically Windows images are much larger after updates, installing software, etc. So you have the following options from least to most convenient:

• Split your .wim file into several chunks to get the whole image to fit with WinPE on one parition. I can't see any benefit to doing this now since Windows 10 1703 supports creating multiple partitions on USB drives.
  • Note: My script doesn't allow for creating split images yet. So if for some reason you needed to deploy the image from a FAT32 drive, you would need to capture it yourself, or two a second NTFS drive and split it later.
• Use two USB drives. One FAT to boot Windows PE, and other as NTFS to hold the images. This works but if you have a Microsoft Surface or similar device, these only have a single USB port so to use both would need a USB hub.
• Continue reading my instructions on formatting a USB drive with two paritions. One small FAT partition for Windows PE, and the other as NTFS for images. I find this to be the easiest method, as USB 3 drives are getting pretty cheap, are are very fast, and more convenient as you only need one device.

This should go without saying, but all data on the drive will be erased! - Also, make sure to select the right drive!

1. In the Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment type diskpart and press Enter.
2. Use these commands to partition the disk into two paritions using Diskpart.
   1. List disk
   2. select disk x - (Where x is USB drive.)
   3. clean
   4. create partition primary size=512 (This makes WinPE 512MB. Increase as needed if you have added more to your WinPE setup.)
   5. active
   6. format fs=FAT32 quick label="WinPE"
   7. assign letter=P
   8. create partition primary
   9. format fs=NTFS quick label="Images"
   10. assign letter=I
   11. Exit
3. Copy Windows PE files to drive
   1. MakeWinPEMedia /UFD C:\WinPE P:
4. Create an "Images" folder on the I drive. This is where the script will store and read images from.
   1. mkdir I:\Images

ISO disk image

1. Use MakeWinPEMedia with /ISO option.
   • MakeWinPEMedia /ISO C:\WinPE C:\WinPE\WinPE.iso

Resources

• Create bootable WinPE media
• WinPE: Mount and Customize
• WinPE: Store or split images to deploy Windows using a single USB drive