You can use your bootable media with ImageX
to apply a captured image to a stand-alone system. The image can be
stored and applied from several different locations, including the
following:
A USB Flash Drive
This includes the USB flash drive used to boot to WinPE. If the USB flash drive is large enough, this is the easiest method.
A Removable USB Hard Drive
On some systems, you may need to attach the hard
drive after booting into WinPE, and on other systems, you may need to
attach it before booting into WinPE.
A Drive on the Existing System
If the system has a preexisting operating
system, you can copy the image file onto the system while booted into
the operating system. The only drawback is ensuring that you have
enough hard drive space to accept the image file and install Windows 7.
You use the Imagex /Apply command to apply an image. The /Apply command includes the following options:
image_file
This is the full path and filename of the WIM file containing the volume image.
image_number
This is the index number that identifies the image within the WIM file. You can use the Imagex /info
command to identify the index number if your WIM file includes more
than one image. If there is only one image in the file, it has an index
number of 1.
image_name
Instead of the number, you can use the image name. If the name contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in quotes. The ImageX /info command also identifies the image name.
image_path
The path where the image will be applied. This is normally the C: drive but can be another partition for a dual-boot system.
The basic syntax with these options is as follows:
Imagex /apply image_fi1e image_number or image_name imagepath
For example, if you have an image file named Win7.wim with a single image located in the D:\Images path and you want to apply the image to the C: drive, you can use the following command:
Imagex /apply D:\images\win7.wim 1 c:
The following steps show how to apply an image using ImageX:
Boot
using the WinPE media you created. When the WinPE boots, it will run
the wpeinit program and eventually you'll see a command prompt in the X:\Windows\System32 folder after wpeinit completes. As a reminder, X: is the actual assigned drive and it represents a RAM disk created by the WinPE.
Identify the drive letter of your bootable media. You can do this by entering the Dir command followed by a letter like this:
Dir C:
Dir D:
Dir E:
Once
you identify the drive, change to the drive by entering the letter and
a colon. For example, on our system, the bootable media was the H:
drive, so we entered this command:
H:
Enter the following ImageX command to apply the image:
Imagex /apply H:\images\win7.wim 1 c:
If your image is located somewhere else, you'll need to modify the path to the image instead of using h:\images\win7.wim.
Additionally, if you have an image file with multiple images, you may
need to use a different index number than the number 1, depending on
which image you want to apply.
The display will show steady progress in the following format:
[ 26% ] Applying progress: 3:24 mins remaining
When the process completes, you can reboot the system and it will boot into the Windows 7 Welcome phase.
If you want to view the contents of an image, you can use the imagex /dir
command by specifying the path to the image and the image number, or
image name. The output is extensive, so you may want to redirect it to
a text file. You can issue the following command from the Deployment
Tools command prompt to create a text file listing all the files and
folders from the first image in the C:\images\win7.wim file:
Imagex /dir c:\images\win7.wim 1 > c:\images\win7.txt
