Adding drivers to an existing .wim image

Sometimes a basic WinPE disk with Acronis plug-in does not have drivers for your specific hardware, for example, for storage device controllers. The easiest way to add them is to select the Advanced mode in Acronis Media Builder and specify the drivers to add. You can add the drivers manually to an existing .wim file 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 https://technet.microsoft.com/.

To create a custom Windows PE image

  1. If you don't have the .wim file with the Acronis plug-in, start Acronis Media Builder and create it by choosing WIM file as a destination for the WinPE-based media. Refer to Creating Acronis bootable media for details.

  2. Depending on your version of Windows AIK or Windows ADK, do one of the following:

    • In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, right-click Windows PE Tools Command Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.
    • In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, right-click Deployment Tools Command Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.
    • In the Start menu, click Windows Kits, click Windows ADK, right-click Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment, and then select Run as administrator.

  3. 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
  4. Copy your .wim file, for example, to folder C:\winpe_x64\. By default, this file is named AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim.

  5. Mount the base image to a local directory by using the DISM tool. To do this, type:

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

  6. Add your hardware driver, by using the DISM command with the Add-Driver option. For example, to add the Mydriver.inf driver located in folder C:\drivers\, type:

    Dism /image:C:\winpe_x64\mount /Add-Driver /driver:C:\drivers\mydriver.inf
  7. Repeat the previous step for each driver that you need to add.

  8. Commit the changes by using the DISM command:

    Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\winpe_x64\mount /Commit
  9. Create a PE image (.iso file) from the resulting .wim file. Refer to Creating an .iso file from a .wim file for details.