Hi, I' trying to install WES7 on a USB key or an external hard drive but the install process can't find any drive even if the bios of the laptop can detect the usb drives. If you please can guide me. Read and learn great advise from Sebus that I already followed but with no luck. Thanks!
The following shows how to create an ntfs active primary partition on a usb disk with a temporary volume drive letter of u: (for usb), and a label of usbwes assuming then is not a drive already with that assigned letter. We will then apply a new windows embedded WIM image to the partition. Make sure your USB storage device is plugged in, and that your BIOS can recognize USB devices as bootable. If you boot from the WES7 IBW DVD, you get an interface to the Windows preinstallation environment (WinPE) and there are several options: Build an Image Deploy an Answer File or WIM Launch WinPE Command Prompt (this loads networking services) and you can use the F10 key to call up a new command console (this does not load networking) Tap L on your keyboard to launch wpeinit.exe and you will have a command prompt Code: X:\Sources> (X: is the ramdisk that WinPE creates to run itself from) type Code: diskpart At the DISKPART> prompt, type Code: list disk You should be able to see all storage disks on your system, except the DVD in use and the ramdisk that WinPE uses. If you have an 8GB USB drive, it would show up as something like: Code: Disk 2 Online 7680 MB 7680 MB select the disk by typing Code: sel disk 2 Code: "Disk 2 is now the selected disk." should appear If you are sure that this disk is the one that you want to work with, select its disk number, otherwise, stop here and type exit. If all is ok, type the following commands Code: clean Code: create partition primary Code: sel part 1 Code: assign letter=u Code: active Code: format fs=ntfs label="usbwes" quick Code: exit you have now left diskpart and your USB device is prepped. If you have created your image file in the IBW, and saved it as install.wim on a shared network drive on a computer called \\mycomputer in a folder named \images, for instance: \\mycomputer\images\install.wim You do this by typing Code: net use n: \\mycomputer\images /user <username> and then your password for <username> you can apply it using imagex as follows, still from the WinPE interface Code: imagex /apply n:\install.wim 1 u: then make it bootable by typing: Code: bcdboot u:\windows /s u: It seems quicker that way than selecting "Deploy Answer File or WIM". If you have not yet created your image you can do it directly from the Image builder wizard, by going back to the WinPE Embedded start screen and selecting B to build an image, which you can do directly on drive u:, selecting language and region and whether you want other drivers etc., added to the image. The IBW should reformat the drive, and make it bootable and ready for a first run. (The imagex commandline is exactly the same operation for applying Windows 8 to a usb drive in a WindowsToGo setup.)
Doesn't make a lot of sense doing all this for a single netbook (imaging). If you're okay with a circa 10GB install, then any Win7 version can be changed to install "Win7 Starter" (barebones win7). Go into Win7 source folder and ie.cfg file. Once you have the file open in notepad change Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate to read "Starter".
Im very interested in this however it seems like a whole lot of trouble to go through for what Im looking for so I want to ask first if anyone is using EWF filter in a standard W7? if so how did you incorporate it?what Im looking to do is have a W7 Ent with all driverpacks slipstreamed into it with keep the drivers option and have it also USB bootable so that I have a USB that will boot on most computers. I have this with XP but not w7 so Im looking for solutions. can I get some suggestions?
I used the WES7 IBW and with this you can incorporate ewf but I am not sure if you can slipstream driverpacks this way yet.