Windows 10: Best way to create W10 Pro reference computer and deploy the image

If you're internet is slow, that doesn't exactly mean this will be slow (although it sounds like you might not have that great of a network to start with, so...). Try the USB stick method and see how you like it.

 

Nope, not on a domain. I'll steer clear of Sysprep. I just wasn't sure by what it mean when it said you had to use it to remove certain computer specific information. I can easily change the name of the computers afterwards since I only have 4 of them.

 

Yeah, I know. I just meant that I have used shared folders in similar fashion before since we don't have a server here where I work. Our networks infrastructure could stand to be upgraded, especially the cabling as I'm pretty sure it's still all CAT5 (maybe CAT5e). It's an older building and when you talk about small-town library budgets, well, let's just say I'm not driving around in a Ferrari or anything *Smile Actually, we have a pretty healthy budget for a small-town library, so I shouldn't complain.

 

It will definitely help! Thanks! I'm probably going to have to wait until Monday to do much more since I get off in an hour. Although, I've been know to come up here on weekends when all is quite, making it a little easier to focus and work on something like this.

 

So I was working on this and have attempted to capture my image and have it save to the same USB as WinPE is on, but when it gets to about 60% if fails and says that there is not enough space on the USB. It's a 32GB USB, so I would think that that is more than enough space to save an image file.

I did a brief amount of research and it would appear that it has something do with the ScratchFile...whatever that is. Anyway, apparently some people suggest saving the image out to a different location/drive. I've got a spare external HDD laying around and have it plugged in and ready to go, but am not entirely sure about how to specify that I want my image file to save to the HDD and not the USB with PE on on it. Any ideas?

 

It is very easy for the Windows image to get as large as 20- 50 GB, however that would only happen if you put a lot of stuff on the image before capturing. (I have my competed Windows image with office and all my other softwares and the image is only 9 GB). Lets not move to the external drive just yet. Have you made absolutely sure you are saving the image to the flash drive? What drive letter did you use to save the image to? Did you use X:? Remember- X: is reserved for WinPE.

*>>WinPE runs from RAM, so saving to X it isn't going to be of help- if you save a huge amount of data to X:, the ram disk WinPE uses will fill and you'll run out of space. I find when using WinPE the drive letter for the thumb stick is E:. It might not be for you. You'll have to poke around by switching to different drive letters and using the 'DIR' command to determine if what you have switched to is the thumb stick. The thumb stick will have the same file structure as the 'media' folder from wherever you copied WinPE on your ADK computer.

>>When you discover which drive letter the thumb stick is, you'll have to make sure you tell DISM the drive letter. Let's say it's E and the partition with the Windows install is letter C. Here's what the DISM command would look like:

DISM /capture-image /imagefile:E:\install.wim /capturedir:C:\ /name:"Windows partition capture"

Lets assume the same circumstances but say the command was typed differently. This time the drive letter wasn't specified:

DISM /capture-image /imagefile:install.wim /capturedir:C:\ /name:"Windows partition capture"

This command would still work, however the captured image is going to be saved at the current selected directory at the WinPE command line (X:\Windows\System32\ by default). Since it uses the drive letter X, its going to be saved to the machine's RAM and isn't going to help you. You'd have to switch to a folder on the E drive (cd E:\Folder) and then run the command for it to work.

>>Lets say that's not the issue:
If you want to use your external drive (I assume its USB) first make sure that the USB port you have it plugged into is live. Not all USBs are going to work right out of the box with WinPE, especially if the port requires some sort of special driver that you would need to load onto WinPE to function. Plug it into a USB 2.0 to be safe (usually they all work) or try it in a USB 3.0 port and it might just work (I can't say for sure- I don't have that model of computer). You'll have to find the drive letter WinPE is using to designate the drive using the same method described above for finding the USB stick. I would imagine it might be G: D: F: or E:, although I can't say for sure. You'll know you have the right drive if when you use the DIR command, the selected letter has the same file structure as your external drive. (If you type the command 'notepad' at the WinPE command line, you should be able to use notepad from WinPE. Then you can go File> open and have a visual look at the drives WinPE sees, just like if you were running Windows)

Hope this helps

 

I think I see where I messed up after reading your reply, but will be unable to try again until tomorrow.

A few additional questions:

1) You've stated that WinPE runs off RAM. Why doesn't it run off the USB since that's where it is booting from? Does it somehow transfer over to the RAM once it has been booted?

2) Once I've capture the image, will it overwrite WinPE on my USB?

I am using the USB drive method for the test since these new computers aren't hooked up to our LAN yet or else I would opt for the shared folder option.

 

**Yeah, I use the shared folder option. If you had the capabilities it would be worth looking into. If you could make an independent network between all of the computers or even just take a CAT 6 from one computer to another one. I don't know- but regardless it sounds like the USB approach is most convenient.

*>>This might answer both your additional questions:

>>WinPE works generally how Windows does altogether- all about the Windows image. Regularly, with a Windows installer you would get from Microsoft, the installer lays down a WIM found on the installer (actually it might be a highly compressed image on a .esd file) to the hard disk. It is essentially what you're doing with DISM here and you can actually do this yourself by applying a .WIM pulled right from an installer. What does this have to do with anything? WinPE works the exact same way. When you choose to boot from your WinPE media, it creates a ramdisk- a nifty little process where a portion of the machine's RAM is used like a hard disk. WinPE's .WIM image is then applied to the ramdisk and then the machine boots from that.

>>The only time the computer is reading from the USB while starting WinPE is then- it doesn't run off of the USB. It likely works this way to make sure WinPE runs smoothly and doesn't break down when needing to access a system file say if the USB were to be removed. Think of it this way: you wouldn't want your hard drive to become disconnected when Windows is running, right? It could also be because WinPE is generally intended for use in an enterprise environment where a server is used. The machine to be imaged is PXE booted and after a little negotiating with server(s) a boot file and WinPE is downloaded. It would be ideal in this situation to have WinPE set down on a ramdisk and have it run from the machine rather than having unnecessary network traffic and machines fighting for access to files for the duration the machines are in WinPE.

>>As a matter of fact no Windows installer runs from the physical media- an installer obtained from Microsoft has a little modified WinPE on it that has the install application to make it easier for non command line type people to install Windows. The WinPE image is 'boot.wim' and is always found in the 'Sources' folder on the media. The Windows image on a conventional installer is 'install.wim' or a highly compressed install.esd (when businesses purchase Windows from Microsoft they usually get the .wim; consumers get .esd).

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know about Windows, so back on track:

>>Just by capturing your Windows image to the USB should not overwrite WinPE on the USB (unless you title it 'boot.wim' and save it in the sources folder). When WinPE is running, the flash drive is just a flash drive as if it were connected to any other Windows device and should behave as such.

 

Is the /imagefile:E:\install.wim attribute just specifying the path for where the captured image should be saved? And do I have to name it install.wim? Or can it be named anything? On the TechNet site it seems to indicate I can name it whatever I want.

 

Ok. So it appears I've successfully captured the image to my USB drive and am ready to deploy it to one of my new computers. If I am understanding the process correctly, I will need to do the following:

**Boot to WinPE on computer that is ready to have image applied
**Run Diskpart command
-run list disk to determine disk number of hard drive (in my case it is also 0)
-select disk 0
-clean disk 0 to remove any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk
>>Question: On the technet page describing how to apply an image, it mentions that you must format the volume before applying an image if it has an existing Windows install. Does cleaning the disk and using the format commands for partitioning accomplish this? I would assume it does, but just want to make sure.

-create three "primary" partitions, the first being the SYSTEM partition, the second being the true primary partition where Windows will be eventually installed and the third being a primary partition of around 15GB.
>>Question: Do I need to specify a recovery partition? And if so, isn't the designated drive letter of choice typically R:, which would require me to choose a different letter for my temp partition? Or is this the recovery partition not valid for MBR systems?

**Exit Diskpart and begin using DISM
-Copy my image to the temporary partition.
>>Question: I don't fully understand the purpose of the temporary partition. Does it have an added benefit for applying the image off my USB (since I am not using the shared file method for this test) that I'm missing? How does this prevent things from breaking? Or will that only be relevant for the shared folder method?

-Apply image from temp partition to the designated OS partition
-Do some IMPORTANT bcdboot stuff
>>Question: At this point, should I go ahead and use Diskpart to delete the temp partition and extend the primary OS partition? Or do I first try booting things up to see that everything works properly first?

Let me know if I am understanding the process correctly. Writing it out just now kind of helped me visualize/conceptualize the process. I haven't used the command line much ever, so this is all unfamiliar to me. Think I've found something else I need to spend some time learning how to use *Smile For some reason, my "to learn" list never seems to shrink. I just keeps getting infinitely longer.

 

Yes! Sounds like you know what to do.

1>>Diskpart's 'format' 'create par' etc... commands are the manual way to create and format hard disk partitions. Cleaning the disk will totally wipe all and everything on it so therefore give you a blank slate to work with. You can then create partitions and format them for use so yes it will work.

2>>The Recovery partition is entirely optional and I think it is just there for OEMs to drop files and stuff necessary for repairing the PC should it stop working. Frankly there is no use for it with what your doing- it'll just be a partition labeled recovery that has nothing on it. You could probably get away with having only one partition on the disk, although I would recommend making a system partition.

3>>The temp partition's sole purpose is to allow you to disconnect the USB and start another computer when you notice DISM applying the image (say when you were to automate the process with a script) since the image being applied is on the temp partition and not the USB. Since WinPE runs from RAM and the image to be applied is on the hard disk, everything should function even if the USB stick is unplugged (considering there are no to be used scripts on the USB stick). Right now the current approach of having only one USB stick to go around would mean you'd have to image one machine at a time.

4>>For good practice, at the very end you should delete the temp partition and extend the OS partition. If you want to make sure everything works then yeah boot everything up and test it without deleting the par. (if you want to). There's noting too exciting about it since it only holds the Windows image (.wim). I would think if everything does work you'd rather just leave it as is and consider it a success than having to go and extend os partition and delete the temp par (even if you're just testing).

>>It is great that you're to learn list keeps growing- it is a great thing to keep learning new stuff and expand your knowledge.

 

Can you further explain this:

And this since I am not doing the network approach right now:

I think I obviously must have done it correctly, but don't fully understand why I did it correctly haha.

 

How do I go about doing this part? Do I just type that line of "code" in WinPE? Or do I need to navigate there somehow?

 

You just type that command. However, make sure that the drive letter at the front of the command is the letter designating the partition where the Windows image was laid down (it should be C if you did the diskpart commands in the same WinPE session and used C). Sometimes the letter is D for me and I have to type:

D:\Windows\System32\bcdboot D:\Windows /l en-US

 

Uh oh. Looks like I messed up when posting there- I was thinking one thing (capturing an image) but then went on to describe how to do another thing (deploy the image).

>>Rebuilding the WinPE media is only necessary when you modify WinPE's .wim, add things to the media, and if you use an .iso image instead of a USB stick (when you rebuild, it puts the new .wim and includes anything in the 'media' folder on the root of the WinPE media).

-I just want you to know about this in case you need to make a .iso or create a totally new USB stick (maybe you want to have 2 USB sticks to go around). Given you are using a USB stick for all of this, you don't need to rebuild the WinPE media each time you modify it since you can just copy your Windows image to deploy right to the USB and you can replace the WinPE .wim on the USB with a modified one (I was making .iso CD images with this for use with a virtual machine and hence described it in this way. You don't get the freedoms you do with a USB stick when working with a .iso). If you've captured your Windows image right to the USB then its on there and there's nothing special that you need to do. The next step is to deploy