Windows 7 imagex

Evening guys have been tinkering with WAIK and have been trying to create a bootable Windows 7 PE, what fun and games I have all I can say is do not read the 70-680 or Official documentation that come with WAIK they are both wrong and have caused me hours of frustration

, oh and the information on technet was missing a step.

So after much swear words, and tinkering I am stuck, Ok I have managed to create ISO file and it boots up But Imagex is nowhere to be found, when I type the command imagex I was instructed to copy the Imagex.exe to the root of the ISO directory. Then I added the wim file to the boot, and then created the iso with OSCDIMG.

When I browse the Disk in Windows the Imagex.exe is at the root of the disc ( not in a folder or anything). So basically I cannot capture the image when in PE as I can't seem to find the tool or it doesn't appear to be there

What have I done wrong lads? this is driving me up the bloody wall now I understand why they should of got proof readers

This has now been resolved panic over

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Comments

docrice

You would figure that Microsoft would make creating a WinPE disc easy, with imagex.exe included. I assume you determined that imagex.exe was located on a different drive letter or something.

ally_uk

Yeah you got it in one, what a pain in the ass I have typed up some notes for future reference. In all the documentation I read i.e MS Press book, WAIK documentation step 5 was missing and my ISO wouldn't boot I was like wtf is going on

ahwell ive got there in the end

1) Download and Install WAIK
2) Open Deployment Tools Command Prompt as Administrator
3) Run the copype.cmd i.e copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
4) Add IMAGEX copy “c:\program files\<windows AIK>\Tools\x86\imagex.exe” c:\winpe_x86\iso\
5) Very Important! The Sources directory has to have a boot.wim file
xcopy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\iso\sources\boot.wim /y
6)Create the ISO File
oscdimg -n -bc:\winpe_x86\etfsboot.com c:\winpe_x86\ISO c:\winpe_x86\winpe_x86.iso

Burn the iso boot it up navigate to your cdrom drive in the command prompt and then you are good to go 

ally_uk

Ok so now imagex is not working?

imagex.exe /capture d: d:\newimage\win7.wim /compress /verify

so d: Is what my C: shows as when I boot PE, So the above command I am telling it to run imagex then capture a image of my c: and then create the directory newimage\win7.wim

Is it not happy because I havent created the newimage directory? or is something else going **** up lol

docrice

It looks like you're taking an image of the d: drive, yet writing the image file to the same drive. These should be different.

kriscamaro68

First off use a USB stick not a cd its much easier to deal with.
Create bootable Windows PE 3.0 USB drive - 4sysops

Second are you making sure to commit the changes before unmounting the boot.wim?
Also you should not be writing the wim file to the same drive as you are copying from that will cause issues.

Also look at using gimagex instead of imagex cause imagex is lame. You can also use gimagex on your regular OS to mount the wim and edit things that way so you are using the GUI to make sure things are correct. Always make sure you commit your changes but make sure that when you are commiting changes that you do not have some random window open from the wim you mounted. If you do it will jack up your wim file.

I used the technet article and was able to get it to work awhile ago. I was doing this on a daily basis for my current job but have since moved on.

unnamedplayer

docrice wrote: »

It looks like you're taking an image of the d: drive, yet writing the image file to the same drive. These should be different.

Imagex can capture and write the image file to the same drive with no problem.

Ok so now imagex is not working?

imagex.exe /capture d: d:\newimage\win7.wim /compress /verify

so d: Is what my C: shows as when I boot PE, So the above command I am telling it to run imagex then capture a image of my c: and then create the directory newimage\win7.wim

Is it not happy because I havent created the newimage directory? or is something else going **** up lol

Your C: drive has been assigned

because WinPE has assigned C: to the system reserved partition.

Does the d:\newimage folder exist? The target folder must exist already when capturing an image.

Also, to capture an image you have to run sysprep on the machine first.

HTH

RobertKaucher

It has been over a year. Why is this documentation still wrong? I can understand some issues back in October 2009 when the cert was still in beta... I am seriously disappointed that the documentaion has still never been fixed.

ally_uk

lol yeah most of what you guys have said is not even written in the documentation which is lame how is anyone supposed to learn anything when the material is wrong. I will try your suggestions and will let you know how I get on, I want to use imagex because it's mentioned in the 70-680 plus im old skool I prefer the cli.

Lol Sysprep is not letting me prepare the machine either it says fatal error has occurred whoops I think I know the reason why though.

kriscamaro68

unnamedplayer wrote: »

Also, to capture an image you have to run sysprep on the machine first.

This is not true at all. I capture images all day long at work without syspreping them. I capture 5 different times through my image process before I ever even sysprep.

ally_uk

Hey guys thought I would give you guys the heads up, I created the new image file, loaded up imagex and ran the command

imagex.exe /capture c: c:\newimage\win7.wim /compress /verify

It's still not playing ball when I run the above command, and press enter it comes up with the example and all the various different flags, is there something I am still no getting here?

The syntax is correct, the folders have been created and I have tried running imagex both from Windows and from a PE CD, and it still isn't working

Claymoore

ally_uk wrote: »

imagex.exe /capture c: c:\newimage\win7.wim /compress /verify

You need to give the image a name, enclosed in required quotes. Try:

imagex.exe /capture c: c:\newimage\win7.wim "Test Image" /compress /verify

I haven't captured an image using imagex in a long time. I build all my images using capture sequences in MDT or SCCM OSD tasks.

ally_uk

Many Thanks I will try this tonight and report back the outcome

ally_uk

imagex.exe /capture c: c:\newimage\win7.wim "Test Image" /compress /verify

Is the full command I am now running in image in theory this should work right? lol it doesn't hitting return again produces the same result I get a screen full of the various Imagex options and flag options wtf is going on here?

I am running imagex from within Windows using the WAIK to eliminate wether or not it was the PE CD I created playing up, and it still isn't working

ally_uk

I'm still stumped guys any ideas? would it be worth trying a clean install and starting over? I missed out the sysprep step

kriscamaro68

ally_uk wrote: »

I'm still stumped guys any ideas? would it be worth trying a clean install and starting over? I missed out the sysprep step

I am telling you, You do not need to sysprep. I know this for a fact as I capture all the time without sysprep. ImageX has no way of telling if you h ave sysprepd the computer. Also have you tried not capturing the image to the same drive? Not sure why it is making sense to people that capturing a image of a partition and then writing it to the same one would work. You would be capturing the image you are currently capturing and run into issues with files not being able to be accessed or overwritten because of that. I will have to check the imagex cmd that I use to capture images and let you know.

kriscamaro68

Here is the exact command I used: imagex /capture /compress fast d: f:\test\test.wim "test"

It looks like you are missing the name name/description of the wim at the end. You need to use "test" or whatever you want to call it at the end of the command. You maybe naming the wim file itself earlier in the command but there are identifiers that need to be set such as "test" for verification of the wim in other tools. It requires this to make it work.

Try that and let me know.

is my windows partition and f: is my usb drive I have winpe on and capturing the image to.

FYI the directory you are going to capture the wim to has to exist first unless you are going to capture to the root of the drive.

ally_uk

Thank you for your help guys

One last question when you boot to WinPe how do you list your drive volumes? i,.e what letter the cd-rom as been assigned etc, as the PE environment has a habit of changing the assignment of drive letters many thanks

kriscamaro68

ally_uk wrote: »

Thank you for your help guys One last question when you boot to WinPe how do you list your drive volumes? i,.e what letter the cd-rom as been assigned etc, as the PE environment has a habit of changing the assignment of drive letters many thanks

diskpart

list volume