Skip to main content

How to create a Windows PE disk.

Windows PE is a pre-execution environment for the Windows platform. Anybody who has used the Vista/2008 recovery option has used Windows PE. The instructions below will guide you through creating a windows PE disk. It is command line driven.

In class, we talked about using Windows PE and Imagex.exe to reimage your clients. This will allow you to restore a client to the same state that it was in prior to release to the user. When you create you WinPE image, do not forget to add the Imagex.exe command from the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). Imagex is what allows you to capture and apply images.

The process for rebuilding the client is:

1) Offload the client data using User State Migration Tool (USMT) to an external drive.

2) Boot the client in Windows PE.

3) Format the hard drive.

4) Apply the image (imagex /apply ImageSource ImageNumber Imagedetination)

a. Ex imagex /apply e:\ClientImages\Client013.wim 1 c:

5) Run updates.

6) Restore the user data with USMT

7) Rejoin to the domain if needed.

8) Verify the restoration is successful.

9) (Optional) Boot into Windows PE and create a new image. If update process took a considerable amount of time, consider creating a new image to reduce the wait the next time around.

Your organizations policy needs to support this process. You will be only restore the computer to a state that allows the user to do their job. If the user had any personal software installed, it will not be there after the re-imaging process.

Create a Windows PE disk/drive

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766195(ws.10).aspx (Hard disk)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749311.aspx (CD-ROM)

User State Migration Tool

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=799ab28c-691b-4b36-b7ad-6c604be4c595

Windows Automated Installation Kit (Where you get imageX from)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c7d4bc6d-15f3-4284-9123-679830d629f2&DisplayLng=en

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding a Comment to a GPO with PowerShell

As I'm writing this article, I'm also writing a customization for a PowerShell course I'm teaching next week in Phoenix.  This customization deals with Group Policy and PowerShell.  For those of you who attend my classes may already know this, but I sit their and try to ask the questions to myself that others may ask as I present the material.  I finished up my customization a few hours ago and then I realized that I did not add in how to put a comment on a GPO.  This is a feature that many Group Policy Administrators may not be aware of. This past summer I attended a presentation at TechEd on Group Policy.  One organization in the crowd had over 5,000 Group Policies.  In an environment like that, the comment section can be priceless.  I always like to write in the comment section why I created the policy so I know its purpose next week after I've completed 50 other tasks and can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago. In the Group Policy module for PowerShell V3, th

Return duplicate values from a collection with PowerShell

If you have a collection of objects and you want to remove any duplicate items, it is fairly simple. # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2   # Remove the duplicate values. $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What if you want only the duplicate values and nothing else? # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2   #Create a second collection with duplicate values removed. $Set2 = $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique   # Return only the duplicate values. ( Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $Set2 -DifferenceObject $Set1 ) . InputObject | Select-Object – Unique 1 2 This works with objects as well as numbers.  The first command creates a collection with 2 duplicates of both 1 and 2.   The second command creates another collection with the duplicates filtered out.  The Compare-Object cmdlet will first find items that are diffe

How to list all the AD LDS instances on a server

AD LDS allows you to provide directory services to applications that are free of the confines of Active Directory.  To list all the AD LDS instances on a server, follow this procedure: Log into the server in question Open a command prompt. Type dsdbutil and press Enter Type List Instances and press Enter . You will receive a list of the instance name, both the LDAP and SSL port numbers, the location of the database, and its status.