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Walkthrough

First, you will need a licensed copy of the official Windows image. If you have subscribed to MSDN, you may be able to download the ISO from the MSDN website.

For the rest of this walkthrough, let's assume we are working with en_windows_10_multi-edition_vl_version_1709_updated_sept_2017_x64_dvd_100090741.iso.

Run command prompt with administrative privileges (start menu > command prompt > right-click > run as 'Administrator'). Run the following commands:

cd C:\
md WindowsBuilder && cd WindowsBuilder
powershell -Command "& { wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/buildcenter/WindowsBuilder/master/scaffold.ps1 -UseBasicParsing | iex }
build configure

Obviously, for the more vigilent, you should just download this repo on Github (Clone or download > Download ZIP) and copy out the contents of the ZIP file to C:\. Don't forget to run build configure!

Mount your ISO and copy out the contents of [ISO]\source\install.wim to C:\WindowsBuilder\working\output.

Back to your command prompt:

build mount .\working\output\install.wim

Your WIM image probably contains multiple versions of Windows. WindowsBuilder will analyze the WIM file and prompt you to select the version to mount. We are using #3 (Windows Enterprise). Mounting and dismounting can take a long time, especially on magnetic hard disks. We strongly recommend doing this on a fast SSD.

Next, you will normally be making a copy of C:\WindowsBuilder\src\global.bsd to something meaningful. We have already made one win10-1709.bsd, so let's work with that for now. Go ahead and open C:\WindowsBuilder\src\win10-1709.bsd with your favorite text editor. Follow our inline documentation and make your changes.

Your assets lives under C:\WindowsBuilder\resource by default. We have made some sample resources to get you started.

When you are satisfied with your customization:

build win10-1709

Be patient and let WindowsBuilder do the legwork. Then dismount the image and save your changes:

build dismount

TIPS Saving a large WIM file can be very CPU and I/O intensive. Some ways to speed things up are:

  • Tune up your PC power plan to high performance
  • Disable antivirus active protection
  • Don't run any other heavyweight process with this

Embedding drivers

The computer that you want to service will probably include some custom third party drivers. We can embed them right in, so everything works right out of the box!

We have included a sample configuration for Surface Pro 3. Go download your driver pack from the official source. We have tested SurfacePro3_Win10_14393_1703702_1.zip with Windows 10 (1709) and it works fine. Unzip to C:\WindowsBuilder\resource\Driver-SurfacePro3.

Again, this repo has included a sample configuration under src\surfacepro3.bsd. Open it up with your favorite text editor and review the configuration. When you are done:

copy .\working\output\install.wim .\working\output\surfacepro.wim
build mount .\working\output\surfacepro.wim
build surfacepro3
build dismount

Sometimes your PC manufacturer doesn't provide an easy way for you to download all drivers in a complete package. In that case, install WindowsBuilder on the PC you want to service, and create a dump of all installed drivers:

build driver dump

Split Image

We're almost ready to install your customized image on the bare metal. If you are putting your image file on a USB drive, note that FAT32 filesystem cannot handle files bigger than 4GB, which your final WIM may well exceed. To work around that, we recommend splitting the image to 1GB pieces:

build split .\working\output\surfacepro.wim

You will get C:\WindowsBuilder\working\output\surfacepro.swm, C:\WindowsBuilder\working\output\surfacepro1.swm, etc.

Optional

You can remove unused versions in the final image. This is mostly just to reduce confusion.

powershell
Get-WindowsImage -Path .\working\output\install.wim
# This will remove all except entry 3
Remove-WindowsImage -Path .\working\output\install.wim -Index 1
Remove-WindowsImage -Path .\working\output\install.wim -Index 1
Remove-WindowsImage -Path .\working\output\install.wim -Index 2
Remove-WindowsImage -Path .\working\output\install.wim -Index 2
Remove-WindowsImage -Path .\working\output\install.wim -Index 2

Ready to Go

If you are trying to install Windows on a bare metal PC, go to the tutorial on building your Windows PE USB drive.

You can also install Windows on bare metal using a VHD. This is called "native boot". Check out the tutorial here.

If your computer has Windows Hyper-V installed, and you want to install your image on a virtual machine, go to the tutorial on installing WIM on VHD.