.WIM

Windows PE and the PE Walkthroughs

The Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 2.0 delivers a basic, no-frills operating system with limited services and no GUI capabilities that’s built upon the Windows Vista kernel. You can use it to prep a PC for Vista installation, to copy disk images from a network file server to a target machine, and to fire off Windows Vista setup and installation. To learn more about Windows PE, check out the Technet article “What is Windows PE?“

With a little foreknowledge about Windows PE at your disposal, you can’t help but find these Windows PE Walkthroughs (step-by-step instructions on building and using various Windows PE environments) on TechNet of terrific interest:

• Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk on CD-ROM
• Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk on UFD
  (In case this acronym is unfamiliar to you, as it was to me: UFD = USB Flash Drive)
• Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk on Hard Disk
• Walkthrough: Boot Windows PE from CD-ROM
• Walkthrough: Boot Windows PE from Hard Disk
• Walkthrough: Create a Custom Windows PE Image

By the time you work your way through this material, you’ll be well-prepared to deal with most of the chores related to creating and manipulating the Windows Image (.wim) files that Vista uses for installation and setup. Definitely worth getting to know, and spending some time with. I’m pitching a book on this subject right now myself, with a Web site to go along with it, in fact. WinPE is also great for Vista troubleshooting, low-level system maintenance and repair, and more as well.