Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Booting to an Image from a hard Disk

By booting Windows PE from a hard disk and loading it into RAM, you can perform a refresh installation of Windows 7. Once you've booted Windows PE, you can repartition system disks and install the new Windows image. You can also use Windows PE as a Windows Recovery Environment to recover unbootable systems.

To boot Windows PE from a hard disk, follow these steps:

1. Boot the computer from prepared Windows PE media.
2. At the command prompt, enter diskpart, and then enter list disk. Note the disk number of the primary disk. Typically the primary disk is disk 0.
3. Enter select disk n, where n is the primary disk.
4. Enter clean to wipe the disk and remove all contents.
5. Enter create partition primary size=size, where size (in MB) creates a partition large enough to hold the Windows PE source files.
6. Enter select partition 1 to select the partition you just created, and then enter active to mark the new partition as active.
7. Enter format fs=fat32 to format the partition with the FAT32 file system.
8. Enter exit to quit DiskPart. Don't exit the command prompt.
9. Write a new boot sector to the disk by entering bootsect /nt60 c:, where c: is the drive letter of the primary drive you formatted.
   Note Bootsect is in the petools\x86 and petools\amd64 folders within the build. Use the version of Bootsect that supports the type of Windows pe image you are creating.
10. Copy the contents of your ISO folder to the drive by entering xcopy /echry x:\*.* c:\.