How to image a Microsoft® Windows® system using a bootable WinPE

USB drive and ImageX

ImageX allows you to take complete backup of a Microsoft® Windows® volume and save the image to a file. You can then restore
any system with it's original image in just a few minutes.
Requirements

• A Microsoft® Windows® system with a minimum of 3GB free disk space.

• A USB flash memory drive or USB hard disk drive (a minimum of 1GB is recommended).
• RMPrepUSB
• The Windows 7 Automated Installation Kit (WAIK).

• A utility that can mount an ISO file (such as the freeware utility 'Virtual CloneDrive').
Procedure

1. Install WAIK and create a Windows PE folder

Using your personal Windows XP/Windows Vista®/Windows 7 PC (not the target system that you wish to
image):

1. Download the Windows 7 WAIK ISO file (e.g. KB3AIK_EN.iso 1.7GB). You must agree to the
Terms and Conditions.

2. Download and install your ISO mount utility. (VirtualCloneDrive in this example)

3. Double-click the WAIK.iso file. The WAIK Welcome window should launch. If not, double-click
StartCD.exe on the new drive letter in Explorer.

4. Install the .Net Framework Setup from the WAIK menu.

5. Install the MSXML 6 SP1 Setup from the WAIK menu.

6. Install the Windows AIK Setup from the WAIK menu.

7. Exit from the WAIK menu.

8. Click on Start Menu, All Programs, Microsoft Windows AIK, Deployment Tools Command
Prompt to open up a command prompt window.

9. Type copy ..\x86\imagex.exe c:\ and press Enter.

10. Type COPYPE x86 c:\pe86 and press Enter.

11. Type copy c:\pe86\winpe.wim c:\pe86\ISO\sources\boot.wim and press Enter.

12. Type copy c:\imagex.exe c:\pe86\ISO and press Enter.

2. Make a bootable USB drive

1. Connect your USB drive to the USB port.

WARNING: All contents on the USB drive will be destroyed!

2. Double-click on RMPrepUSB.exe.
 3. Set the following options:
SIZE = MAX (default)
VOLUME LABEL= WINPE (optional)
BOOT OPTIONS = WinPEv2 [BOOTMGR]
FILESYSTEM and OVERRIDES = FAT32 + HDD (Note: If you want to store image files >2GB on
the UFD use NTFS instead of FAT32)
COPY FILES = Tick it
Copy Folder = Type C:\pe86\ISO

4. Click on Prepare Drive.

5. The USB drive should now contain:

bootmgr
imagex.exe
\sources (Check whether the folder contains boot.wim)
\boot
\EFI

6. Now you can add any other files you wish to the USB drive.

7. When finished, click the RMPrepUSB Eject button.

3. Boot the target system and take an image

The following actions are performed on the target system (the one that you want to take a backup of):

1. Connect the USB drive to the target computer's USB port.

2. Switch on the target computer and press the appropriate key to enter the BIOS Setup menu.
(eg F1, F2, DEL)

3. Check whether the Legacy USB support is enabled, and configure the Boot Order so that the
USB drive will boot first. Ensure that the BIOS USB-ZIP mode setting is set to Fixed Disk and not
Removable Disk (if available).

4. Save and Exit the BIOS menu. The target system should now boot to the Windows WinPE
environment from the USB drive.

5. To find the USB drive and hard disk drive letters - type NotePad, then click on File, Open
and click on the Computer icon. You can now see how your hard disk volumes are lettered in
WinPE. Assume that your USB Flash drive has the letter F: and you wish to backup your C: drive
in the instructions below.

6. Exit from Notepad.

7. At the command prompt, type F:\imagex /capture c: f:\mybackup.wim "my comments here"
/norpfix and press Enter.

8. When this is completed, a backup of the C: drive is available in the mybackup.wim file.

9. If, at a later date, you wish to take another backup, you can append this to the previous
backup as follows: imagex /append c: f:\mybackup.wim "second backup" /norpfix
Note: ImageX using single-instancing, so adding subsequent similar images does not greatly
increase the size of the .wim file.
You can backup other volumes from the hard disk, by following the above procedure.

4. Restoring an image

1. Boot to WinPE from the USB drive

2. Format the target drive volume first (otherwise the existing files will still remain). Eg
Type format C:

3. Type imagex /apply f:\mybackup.wim 1 c:

Note: If you want to restore the second backup that you made, replace the 1 with 2 in the
above command.

If needed, you can use DISKPART to partition and format a blank hard disk first as follows.

DISKPART /s dpart.txt

where the file dpart.txt contains the lines:

LIS DISK
SEL DISK 0
CLEAN
CRE PAR PRI SIZE=100000 ALIGN=16065
FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="MYDRIVE" quick
ASSIGN LETTER=J
ACTIVE
CRE PAR PRI ALIGN=16065
FORMAT FS=NTFS LABEL="BACKUP" quick
ASSIGN LETTER=K
LIST VOL
SEL DISK 0
SEL PAR 1
LIST DISK
LIST PAR
DETAIL PAR
EXIT

In case of an XP image, type Bootsect /nt52 J: or you may see a 'bootmgr is missing' error when you
attempt to boot the XP target system. The drive letters assigned in the diskpart script above are used to
prevent conflicts with existing volume letters. When the system reboots, the active partition (J: in this
example) will become drive C: and the other partition (K:) will be given the D: drive letter.

Note: The ALIGN=16065 text portion is needed only to boot a 'pre-setup stage' XP image (i.e. an
image that will run Setup.exe or Setup32.exe when it boots). You can usually omit this portion of text for
most Windows images.

Bootsect.exe can be found in the WAIK, under Tools\PETools\x86.

Before you reboot the system, you can also make any small adjustments to the files on the J: drive as
you have direct access to these files (for instance, you could copy files or folders to drive J: or K: or add a
link to the Windows Startup folder so that a program runs on first user log-in).

For instance, a simple prep.cmd script file to automatically install Windows XP image onto a new hard
drive in approx. 5 minutes from a bootable WinPE USB flash memory pen drive would be as simple as:

diskpart /s dpart.txt
imagex /apply mybackup.wim 1 J:
bootsect /nt52 J:
echo Finished! - Press a key to reboot
pause>nul
wpeutil reboot

5. Connecting to the network

WinPE can connect to a network. You can then save and restore images directly from a network folder or
your own computer. Check the example procedure given below:

In the example, we will connect to a shared folder on Fred's Windows XP office computer named
'FredsPC'. The read/write shared folder that Fred has made on his office PC has been named 'sharefld'
and Fred is on the 'mydomain' network and has a username of 'freddy' and a password of 'mypassword'.

1. Connect an Ethernet cable and boot to WinPE from the USB drive prepared earlier.

2. Type IPCONFIG /all and check whether you have the valid IP address (not 192.168.1.1).

3. If valid IP addresses are not listed, your WinPE operating system does not contain the
correct drivers. To rectify this, copy the correct Windows 7 network driver files (INF/CAT/SYS etc)
to your WinPE USB drive, e.g. to the folder F:\NETPE. Then on the target system, type drvload
F:\NETPE\xxxxxx.inf (where xxxxxx.inf is the name of your driver inf file). Note that all driver
files should be present (including xxxxx.inf, xxxxx.cat and xxxxx.sys). Wait for one minute and
then type ipconfig /all again. You can also try typing netcfg -winpe to re-initialise the network
stack.

4. Type IPCONFIG and check whether you have the correct Default Gateway and DNS Suffix
listed.

5. To connect to a network share folder, type

NET USE N: \\FredsPC\sharefld /U:mydomain\freddy press Enter, and when prompted for
the password type mypassword.

6. You can now use the N: drive to keep your WIM image files and even backup to the network
or restore from the network.

6. Preparing images for duplication

If you want to use the Windows image on another computer, you must first prepare the operating
system for duplication before you image it. This is because the computer name and Domain Security IDs
are contained in the image. The normal way to remove these identifying values is to use the Sysprep
tool.

• For XP systems, you must acquire the correct version of Sysprep.exe from the XP installation CD
- see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577 for details and use the Reseal button.
C:\Sysprep\sysprep.inf controls what happens on first user boot.
• For Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems, Sysprep.exe is already in the operating
system. C:\Windows\System32\Panther\Unattend\Unattend.xml and
C:\Windows\System32\Oobe\Oobe.xml control what happens on first user boot. Ensure you
remove all other instances of unattend.xml from all drives (including your USB drive if it is
attached when you boot the OS after sysprepping.)
Please research on the Internet for more information about Sysprep.

Tip: When you first boot to a new operating system, the first Windows Welcome screen will be displayed
(called the OOBE or Out-of-Box-Experience). If you pressCTRL+SHIFT+F3 at this point, you will be
asked if you want to go into Audit Mode. In Audit Mode you can install software and generally prepare
the OS for duplication, without creating any user accounts. When you have finished configuring the
system, click on the reseal/OOBE button on the sysprep window to shutdown the system (for Vista/Win7
choose OOBE+Generalize). You can then image it using ImageX as above. After imaging, allow the
system to boot to test out the image on the hard disk. If it is not successful, restore the image and then
use the CTRL-SHIFT-F3 key combination to enter Audit Mode again and fix any issues.

Editing the contents of a WIM file

Using the WAIK, you can mount the backup that you have made to a folder on your office hard disk and
then edit the files in that folder which directly edits the image. In this way you can make small
adjustments to the image contents (eg moving, deleting, adding or editing files), without needing to boot
the target system, make the changes and then re-capture the image. This can be done as follows:

1. On the 'office' system, launch the WAIK command shell (right-click - run as administrator)
window using the Start Menu. Close all other cmd and Explorer windows.

2. Type mkdir c:\mount to create an empty folder

3. Type dism /Mount-Wim /wimfile:C:\mybackup.wim /index:1 /Mountdir:C:\mount

4. You can now use Windows Explorer to edit the image which you will find at C:\Mount. Note:
If using Windows XP, you are advised to hold down the SHIFT key when deleting files or folders
in the image.

5. When finished, commit the changes using the command: dism /Unmount-Wim
/MountDir:C:\mount /commit

Note: If you do not want to keep the changes, use /discard instead of /commit.

Read the WAIK .chm help files for more information.

Tip: I would recommend you always use the /check /verify switches with ImageX. Some
BIOSes have bugs which can cause wim file or restored file corruption - you have been warned!