Creating a custom WinPE 3.0 ISO with your drivers

Sometimes a basic WinPE disk with Acronis Plug-in does not have drivers for your specific hardware, for example, for storage device controllers. Users of Windows 7 can add such drivers to the basic WinPE 3.0 image (WIM) before creating an ISO file with Acronis Plug-in.

Attention! You can only add drivers which have the .inf filename extension.

The following procedure is based on an MSDN article that can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799244(WS.10).aspx

To create a custom Windows PE image, proceed as follows:

1. In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, then right-click Deployment Tools Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
2. Run the copype.cmd script to create a folder with Windows PE files. For example, from a command prompt, type:

   copype amd64 C:\winpe_x64

3. Mount the base image by using the DISM tool to a local directory. For example,

   Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\winpe_x64\winpe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\winpe_x64\mount

4. Add your hardware driver by using the Dism command with the /Add-Driver option. For example:

   Dism /image:C:\winpe_x64\mount /Add-Driver /driver:C:\drivers\mydriver.inf

5. Repeat Step 4 for all other drivers you need to add.
6. Commit the changes using the Dism command with the /Unmount-Wim /Commit option.

   Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\winpe_x64\mount /Commit

   Do not exit the command prompt.

7. Start Acronis Media Builder and add Acronis plug-in to the custom .wim file. Refer to Creating bootable media for details.
8. Create a PE image (.iso file) from the resulting .wim file. Refer to Creating an .iso file from a .wim file for details.