Have you ever wanted to, or needed to, build custom Windows installs for specific hardware? Maybe you want to have features and setting configured during the installation to reduce post-install configuration time or manual step.  You even went as far to download MDT and the ADK, but then got stuck because of the complexity in configuring Windows Deployment Services.  These steps will help you build a custom Windows WIM file with ease.

What it does

Each Windows edition's WIM is mounted and has files injected in to it using the dism cmdlets provided by the ADK and the WinPE add-on. After the drivers and of there files are injected, the WIMs  are saved and copied to a deployment share.

The boot.wim customizations include:

  • Inject PE drivers for provisioning.
  • Adds PE features including PowerShell support.
  • Inject start script to be run on bootup.

The image build process for OS install.wim :

  • Injects Windows updates.
  • Inject drivers and post-install scripts
  • Activate Windows roles and features

To see how all of this is completed with only a few steps, download the role and check out the book for Windows Build Server.