I have created this blog to record the things I learn as I progress in my studies of the Windows Operating System. My focus will primarily be the latest Operating System offerings by Microsoft, but much of the content below may also apply to earlier versions. I invite you to join me as I explore and learn about Microsoft Windows!
In this final installment of the series, I show how to install a new Windows 7 workstation using the tools and components we've put in place. This final piece leverages our custom .wim file, which we install from the network share where it was placed in the previous video, to build a fully-functioning Windows 7 environment.
The tools we use in this video are:
BCDBOOT - Used to set up a system partition on a computer, or to repair the boot environment within the system partition of a computer. BCDBoot can be run from Windows PE
DISKPART - A Command-line tool that enables disk configuration and management from within a Windows PE environment
IMAGEX - A command-line tool used to capture, modify, and rapidly deploy file-based disk images.
In Part 4 of this series, I will show you how to create a .iso image which will allow you to create bootable media for when you are doing your automated installs.
The specific terms and tools referenced in this video are:
WINDOWS PE - "Windows Pre-Installation Environment". This is a lightweight version of Windows 7 (and also other versions of Windows going back to XP) used to allow the deployment of workstations or servers.
WINPE.WIM - This is the base (non-modified) Windows PE image
BOOT.WIM - This contains a bootable version of Windows PE
IMAGEX.EXE - This is an imaging tool used to create, modify and deploy images to workstations and servers. It support the Microsoft Windows Imaging (.wim) format
ETFSBOOT.COM - This is the El Torito Boot Sector File used to allow your .ISO image to boot the device where your image will be installed. (NOTE: The El Torito specification allows a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM to function as either a hard drive or a floppy drive from the perspective of the machine)
OSCDIMG - This is a command-line tool used to create an image file (.iso) of a customized version of Windows PE
COPYPE.CMD - This is a script used to create the WinPE directory structure and copies all of the necessary files for the architecture you've selected (x86, amd64, or ia64)
