Windows/Fast Deployment Windows install

Windows Modified installation

This tutorial shows you how to modify the installer that comes with Windows Vista to include all your softwrae when installing Windows

I personally have a copy on a USB hard drive, whenever i need to setup a computer i use that copy for two reasons

1- USB setup, there is no need for an optical drive (CD or DVD) 2- I don't have to go back and install Service Packs (SP1), 7-ZIP, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, MSN - Live - Bing messenger, Yahoo messenger, Google Talk, and other software i like, i can install them once on the preparation machine (Usually a Virtual PC), and deploy them many times.

The process although costs me some initial time, but i think of it as an investment, I don't need to reinstall everything again and again.

Its primary purpose is to slipstream Windows Vista Service Pack 1, but it works for modifying Windows installation just fine, I even delete all the sample videos and unnecessary things so that they are not installed with windows.

In this tutorial, i will take a step further from all the tutorials you find online and tell you how to make a single installation WIM file to contain Ultimate, Home Premium, And business editions

So here is the original article

NOTICE: You do not need to go through everything.

What is this about ?

Some of my PCs/Laptops at work and home have Windows Vista Ultimate, Some have Business, and my Home PC has windows Home Premium.

Objective

To be able to install in one go all the software we use (Any edition of VISTA (Since not all PCs have license for Ultimate), MS Office, Live Messenger, Yahoo messenger, Google Talk, blah blah blah, blah blah)

Size restrictions

If all editions have identical software, Files in more than one image are only included once in the resulting installation files, an overhead of referring to what files go into what editions do exist. Windows installer DOES support compressed images.

If you are going to use a USB hard disk like me, size will not be an issue, if you are going to use a DVD to install, that is a different story, the image must be no larger than the DVD you are going to install from !

Installing from DVD

The procedure that follows produces an install.wim file that you can replace /sources/install.wim with in the vista DVD (Don't forget to add the boot record to the resulting DVD).

To replace the install.wim in a DVD you will need a tool to extract the boot record to a file, then copy all the data and use that boot file to create a new DVD, right after you replace the sources/install.wim file with the one resulting from this procedure.

Producing the install.wim file

1- Get an empty drive and mount it as a master on a computer (I use a Virtual Machine). 2- Once you get to the OOBE screen (Where you enter a username) hit Ctrl-Shift-F3 3- The system will then reboot into Audit mode and a Sysprep window will pop up. Do not close the Sysprep window. Keep it floating there while you install SP1 and anything else you want to install (MS office, Windows Messenger, Google talk, anything that does not require a restart). 4- run Vsp1cln.exe from the command line so to make the image smaller (By deleting the SP1 Uninstall (Backup) files) 5- from the Sysprep selection window, select OOBE, Generalize, and to Shut Down the system.

6- Mount the disk as second on a system with WinAIK installed (Can be XP, Vista, Or WinPE), note that our disk is now slave, and the primary has WAIK installed,

7- run PostReflect.exe on the image to add any device drivers

Postreflect E:\Windows C:

8- Run imagex to turn the hard disk to a single file (Install.wim) that you can replace into the ISO file of the original build 6k DVD of vista

So if you were working on the Ultimate

imagex /compress maximum /flags "Ultimate" /capture e: c:\install.wim "Windows Vista ULTIMATE" "Windows Vista Ultimate"

Other editions include Business, HomeBasic, HomePremium, Starter, Ultimate, Enterprise, ServerDatacenter, ServerEnterprise, ServerStandard, Notice That there are NO SPACES

NOTE: In the above, Capitalization, or All caps are NOT OPTIONAL, you must pay close attention

Now that we have the Ultimate on the DVD, we repeat steps 1-7 for home premium for example and use the following imageX function to append it to the WIM

imagex /compress maximum /flags "HomePremium" /append e: c:\install.wim "Windows Vista HOMEPREMIUM" "Windows Vista HomePremium"

Then you might want to add Business.

imagex /compress maximum /flags "Business" /append e: c:\install.wim "Windows Vista BUSINESS" "Windows Vista Business"

Again Duplicate files are not inserted into the WIM so space differences are minimal if you do it right and install exact same software on all editions, Also note that although identical files are NOT added twice, the WIM file becomes slightly larger with every file (The way wim works by keeping reference to what file belongs to what edition)

For example, i installed a big big bunch of softwares on all editions, then this is the result in terms of size

Vista Ultimate -- 7'538'541 Bytes
Vista Ultimate AND Home Premium -- 7'842'541 Bytes
Vista Ultimate AND Home Premium AND Business -- 8'205'022

So even though every edition of Vista (And other software) is around 7.5 GBs, all three together with exact same software installed on them is around 8.5 GBs and not 22 GBs

Adding the WIM file somewhere

Some prefer adding the image on the network and using PXE/DHCP to boot computers and install on them, Others prefer to build a DVD (With the size restriction), others prefer to use a USB drive install !

Using a USB hard drive

What i did was the following, I copied the Build 6000 DVD to a USB hard disk, and then replaced the sources/install.wim file So first, we need to have the hard disk partitioned and formatted etc... here is how you do it (Partitioning) from the command line. Notice that you don't need to do it from the command line, But it is easier for me to write the commands on the command lines than spending the time taking screen shots.

1- Click the Windows Logo start button. 2- Where you read start search, enter "CMD" and hit enter 3- in the command prompt, type "diskpart" and wait for the DISKPART> prompt On the diskpart prompt enter the following 4- list disk (and check what the disk number is, you can probably tell from the size of the disk which one it is, on my computer it is DISK 4) 5- select disk 4 (Yours may be different) 6- clean 7- create partition primary 8- select partition 1 9- active 10- format fs=ntfs QUICK (Or fat32, NTFS for USB hard disks, and fat32 for USB flash drives, If you omit the Quick option, get ready for the bad sector check that takes hours). 11- assign 12 -exit

After the exit you should be on the command prompt again, Now we need to copy the files from your Build 6000 DVD that came from MS to your USB hard drive

My DVD is in drive G, My newly prepared USB hard disk is drive H, i know i should be using robocopy to copy all files and make the USB hard disk bootable, this is easier for me because i already know how to use xcopy

xcopy G:\*.* /s/e/f H:\

Happy Deployment

i will come back to this article some time soon and give you instructions for building a DVD or a network install of windows vista, for now i don't have much time, i already have writing this on the 2do list and i will be back soon