Install OS from Hard Drive

Yes, you can do exactly the same with win 7. No idea why more people aren't doing it. Good to have 7 installer available on the move. You can replace the install.wim with one you made yourself, e.g. your updated version.You can also just run setup.exe for a repair install.

Thanks, Si. I learned much of this from you, years ago.

To replace install.wim in the installer's Sources folder with an image customized by setting up the OS, what exactly needs to be done?

Then recompile ISO using ImageX to burn new ISO? Will ImgBurn work?

I wonder if this could also be used for UEFI install, what modifications would be needed.

I see more wonderful information ahead.
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Not sure why you need an iso. I thought the idea was to use the extracted files?

You can copy install.wim out of your updated iso with 7-zip. In fact you can copy the entire contents out. That would be instead of using the standard 7 iso which is a couple of years of updates behind.

It is too much faff for most people to go through the whole sysprepping thing.

Same thing with Vista/8/8.1. Easy to add updates with dism.

I don't understand the question.

The installation files are inside install.wim.

You can use the regular install.wim that comes with the msdn iso. Or you can replace it with one you have added updates to. Or you can go through the whole malarkey of installing, sysprepping and capturing as install.wim. Not much advantage to the last option for most people.

I was asking if there's a way to substitute the image after it's set up with the install.wim in the installer.

I think you are asking about sysprepping ? You might do that if you wanted to include your own programs and settings as well as the updates. Kari has a tut about that.

Or do you mean can you just copy a different install.wim into the extracted sources folder? Yes, you can.

Or you can use poweriso etc to open the standard msdn iso and replace the sources\install.wim with your own install.wim. Any of those are fine.

I don't bother sysprepping usually. Just using the install.wim with updates added is good enough..

TEST -Update 7 installation media

You might want to give this a go:

1) Extract the win 7 dvd/iso onto a partition. ( Not the os partition preferably - anywhere else is fine)

The extracted files look like this:



(You don't need autorun.inf so can delete it if you like. The big file Install.wim is inside the "sources" folder. If you have your own updated install.wim , you can copy it into there , overwriting the standard one.)

2) Register that as your recovery image.

Open an elevated cmd and type (replace d with the drive letter of the partition you extracted the files onto) :

reagentc /setosimage /path d:\sources /target c:\windows

( press enter)

reagentc /enable

(press enter)

3.) Run setup.exe from that partition ( or make a shortcut to run it ) if you want you to do a repair install on your running os, or clean install to another partition.

4.) Start "Repair My Computer" from F8 key, to get an extra recovery option:



That will install windows onto the target partition you set, saving the existing os files into Windows.old folder.

5) Get the full range of installation options by running setup.exe instead:














6) If you boot win7 repair cd ( instead of F8 "Repair My Computer" - which runs winre from the Hard Drive ), then you can still run setup.exe as above and get all the regular installation options. It will use the install.wim on the hard drive to do that.

Not sure why I hadn't done all this before. Still finding new joys with win7 . That is a great addition for anyone to have. It is like a much better version of the oem recovery partition.