New Features of Windows PE 3.0

The following features are changes to Windows PE 3.0 since Windows PE 2.1, the version that shipped with Windows Vista:

• Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) DISM is a new commandline tool that you can use to customize a Windows PE 3.0 image offline. DISM replaces Pkgmgr.exe, Intlcfg.exe, and PEImg.exe.
• Smaller default size Windows PE version 2.1 contains staged optional features that add additional size and required additional effort to remove. The Windows PE 3.0 default image contains only the minimum resources to support most deployment scenarios. You can add optional features by using DISM.
• Serviceable In Windows Vista, you cannot modify a Windows PE image after running peimg /prep against it. Windows PE 3.0 images can be serviced at any time by using DISM. The PEImg.exe tool is not supported in Windows PE 3.0.
• Image optimization Previous versions of Windows PE provide limited support for optimizing (reducing) the size of an image. Using the new DISM /apply-profiles command, you can reduce the contents of a Windows PE 3.0 image to only those files necessary to support a given set of applications.
• System drive letter You can assign any letter to the system drive using the new DISM /Set-TargetPath command.
• Mounted images Windows PE 3.0 supports mounting a Windows Imaging (WIM) file.
• Hyper-V support Windows PE 3.0 includes all Hyper-V drivers except display drivers. This enables Windows PE to run in Hyper-V. Supported features include mass storage, mouse integration, and network adapters.
• Customizable scratch space You can now customize the RAM scratch space as 32, 64, 128, 256, or 512 megabytes (MB).