Windows 7 Image - Customize in Audit Mode with Sysprep

nkaufman said:

Hello Kari,

Excellent tutorial. Still going over it. I do tend to go over the steps a few times to ensure that I have all that is needed.

Hi and welcome to the Seven Forums.

nkaufman said:

(1) Is there a reason why you chose to partition/manage the drives after win-7 installation? Will it impact anything if I format/partition during the win-7 install? Please let me know.

No special reason other than that doing it later in Disk Management I can do everything I want to at once. Change drive letters, name partitions, shrink and expand if I need to.

Other than that how and when you partition has non whatsoever effect in final result.

nkaufman said:

(2) Regarding updates that require Genuine copy - There are many updates that seem to require a genuine copy of windows and I was a bit confused with your earlier response on this topic. I can enter my key since I will be the only one using the image for my current laptop, I was wondering at what step can I enter this.

Using a genuine, valid and original Windows install media, your Windows will be genuine during the 30 day grace period, without activation. All Windows Updates work regardless if you are on the grace period or have already activated your product key. However, if you for some reason want to enter your product key and activate Windows as soon as possible, you can do it normally during the finalizing part of installation when OOBE dialogs are presented (tutorial Part 13, time stamp 1:25:18 in video 1 and 0:13:14 in video 2).

That being said, I am a bit old school in certain matters. I want to install first and check everything works as intended before entering the product key and activating. Especially when using an OEM license I need to be sure all hardware components are working as planned, drivers can be found and so on; using the grace period I can still change / replace hardware components without gambling with my OEM license.

Kari

You can use these for the moment. Am working on an update...

New version Of Aomei Backupper free is out - fantastic stuff

Local download Backupper 2.0




https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzaxya9kuip47xk/RE86v7i.zip

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dd2jecmia3s0x00/RE64v7i.zip

Also the tutorial (Part 10) edited, it says now:

Another of our resident gurus, Siw2 has speliazed in creating ever more unbelievably nice PE systems. For this tutorial I use one of his gems. Siw works constantly with updates to his excellent WinPE , download links to latest versions will be edited here as new versions will become available.

Current versions:
For 32 bit Windows: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rzaxya9kuip47xk/RE86v7i.zip
For 64 bit Windows: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dd2jecmia3s0x00/RE64v7i.zip

Thanks Siw, once again.

nkaufman said:

Hello,

I was wondering what effect, if any, there is if I do not have the 100MB System partition. is there any step that is adversely affected? Please let me know.

Also, the link for files from SIW2 are obsolete. A few people have requested him to put the files again on dropbox and as soon as he does, I'm going to grab them. Do not know if there is a way this forum can keep those files on the server to be readily available to all users.

Thanks again for your assistance.

It's only needed in w7 Enterprise or Ultimate if you use Bitlocker Drive Encryption since it would store encryption keys. Otherwise is not needed, I don't have then on 3 systems.

System reserved partition is totally irrelevant when setting up a Windows PC as told in this tutorial or in any other way. If Windows setup creates the system reserved partition, it's OK, if not it's OK, too.

Personally I have the system reserved partition on each Windows PC I have. I have no objections in having it, I can afford a few megabytes of a terabyte disk and system reserved does not in any way may the PC slower, more insecure or in any way cause issues.

Kari

Hello,

Faced following issue while following this tutorial.

First, Macrium Free seems to hang up at about two-thirds of the way, while installing along with other software. clicking on cancel button, I got a dialog box asking if I really wanted to close install. Clicking yes did not do anything. After closing application from task bar, I get the dialog box that Macrium installed successfully. I open it and everything seemed fine. Did it again with Run as admin. same thing.

Did use Macrium to download PE data that was about 140MB or something like that. Should I have done that or just installed Macrium and nothing else?

Thanks.