S
Southerner
I am trying to get a working solution for imaging our Windows 7 and 8 boxes. We have Intel bios and Intel UEFI boxes.
We do not have a Micorsoft network or active directory so WDS is not an option.
I have made several WinPE 4 and 5 boot usb sticks and they work. I can pull an image from the box and upload it to a share or external usb drive using ImageX, Dism, and GimageX.
So far what I have had very very very limited success with is getting the computer with the new image to boot after getting imaged. Just today I ran across a thread elsewhere that included using "BCDBoot.exe x:\windows /s e:" where E is the drive letter of the newly imaged drive. That seemed to work.
The Microsoft Walkthrough suggested using bcdedit but using the bcdedit /store /enum commands but it finds nothing in the store.
I need to be able to automate the task. In this case that would be a menu to dispart the new drive and hopefully have it detect gpt or mbr and wipe and reformat accordingly but I suspect that is too much to ask. At least a menu to do either mbr or gpt partitioning, then imaging using Dism, and then set/fix/create boot files so that when the machine is booted it will find the hard drive and a valid operating system.
I have looked at a lot of pages and forums including Microsoft Walkthroughs but most seem to be missing something and when I follow them the drive is not bootable afterwards. Most also seem to assume that WDS is being used for imaging. One forum poster reminded me that ImageX and Dism are not a drive imaging package but a file imaging package. That is fine except that it is being used around the world as a drive imaging package so how is it being consistantly and correctly done but others if the images are not being deployed using WDS?
Thank you.
Continue reading...
We do not have a Micorsoft network or active directory so WDS is not an option.
I have made several WinPE 4 and 5 boot usb sticks and they work. I can pull an image from the box and upload it to a share or external usb drive using ImageX, Dism, and GimageX.
So far what I have had very very very limited success with is getting the computer with the new image to boot after getting imaged. Just today I ran across a thread elsewhere that included using "BCDBoot.exe x:\windows /s e:" where E is the drive letter of the newly imaged drive. That seemed to work.
The Microsoft Walkthrough suggested using bcdedit but using the bcdedit /store /enum commands but it finds nothing in the store.
I need to be able to automate the task. In this case that would be a menu to dispart the new drive and hopefully have it detect gpt or mbr and wipe and reformat accordingly but I suspect that is too much to ask. At least a menu to do either mbr or gpt partitioning, then imaging using Dism, and then set/fix/create boot files so that when the machine is booted it will find the hard drive and a valid operating system.
I have looked at a lot of pages and forums including Microsoft Walkthroughs but most seem to be missing something and when I follow them the drive is not bootable afterwards. Most also seem to assume that WDS is being used for imaging. One forum poster reminded me that ImageX and Dism are not a drive imaging package but a file imaging package. That is fine except that it is being used around the world as a drive imaging package so how is it being consistantly and correctly done but others if the images are not being deployed using WDS?
Thank you.
Continue reading...
