Deploy .wim image

snowdog

snowdog

snowdog

Soldato
Joined
27 Oct 2005
Posts
13,804
Location
Netherlands
Hello,

Out hardware supplier (AAEON, part of Asus) has provided us with a .wim image of windows 8 + drivers for their hardware. However, I have no idea how to use this image, all the instructions are complex and they say I require a win 8 dvd to stary windows setup. ''copy the contents of the Windows DVD to the USB flash drive.'' (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825212.aspx#WinPE)

I don't have a Windows DVD of the version we need ( Win 8 industry pro embdedded retail).

Is there no easy way to make a bootable USB stick that deploys this ''System Recovery Image'' on a clean pc ?
 
All recent MS media is basically two files.

INSTALL.wim < OS

Boot.wim < Windows PE

Media boots from the boot.wim file into windows pre installation environment, then uses the install wim file to install windows.

I've never done it mind, and I'm grosly over simplifying it here. I assume if you have say a windows 7 CD you could copy the layout and just overwrite the install.wim or use a deployment server such as windows deployment services to import the wim but you would still need a boot.wim file of some sort. I'm not sure on the relationship between the boot.wim and install.wim if say a win7 boot.wim and files supports later versions.
 
deploy wim without wds/mdt/sccm is difficult

only way to deploy usb by using imageX. i tried it once but it worked ok but after that it never worked again. no idea why

if its for multi deploy, build wds it's very easy and quick
 
Hi

The quickest and easiest way to deploy this setup wim is to use windows deployment services on a windows server, you will need a boot.wim (i recommend getting it from the latest version of a windows os to avoid any nic driver issues) and then you need to import this onto the server in question.

If you don't have access to a server you maybe able to use Microsoft deployment toolkit on a desktop OS but I have only heard about this method.

In short use WDS. Oh yeah make sure you are actually licensed to deploy images of windows, I think this requires a volume licence, as although like most things it will work, technically you need a licence to create and deploy images.
 
May be worth having a go at this.

Get a Windows 8 DVD (regardless of which one) and then create a bootable USB stick (Rufus is a good tool to use to make bootable USB's). Once the stick has been create go to the sources folder on the root of the USB stick and then delete the install.wim file, copy your new install.wim file from Asus into that directory and try booting from the USB and see what happens?
 
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