How to Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive or USB Key with Vista WinPE 2.0
WinPE 2.0 (Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment version 2) also known as Windows PE or Vista WinPE is the new version of mini bootable tool from Microsoft that provides operating system features for installation, troubleshooting, and recovery. In other word, WinPE 2.0 is a slim down or tiny mini version of Windows (you will see lots of reference to MiniNT). Previously WinPE is mostly used by OEMs, ISVs or system builders to prepare and create recovery CD or recovery partition. Previous WinPE popularity is limited due to shortage of functionality compared with third-party boot loader. However, Vista WinPE 2.0 is greatly enhanced and improved, and widely distributed to the public as free download with Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK). With its small size, WinPE 2.0 can be installed on a USB flash drive, also known as USB key to create a bootable USB flash drive with WinPE 2.0 with ability to access, read and write to NTFS partitions, workable on almost all modern computers support USB booting.
Step by step guide on how to make a WinPE 2.0 bootable USB flash drive:
- Get an USB key or USB flash drive. Depending on your need such as data storage or want to put in a lot of custom scripts or applications, it’s better to buy a USB memory key with at least 512 MB in size.
- Download and install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK), which also contains Windows PE 2.0.
- Format USB flash drive from within Windows Vista.
- Open a command prompt and execute the following commands to create a partition (explanation in bracket, which should be ignored):
- Diskpart (text-mode command interpreter to manage objects such as disks, partitions, or volumes)
- list disk (displays a list of disks and information about them)
- select disk 1 (assuming the USD key is detected as disk 1 from the list generated by “list disk” command. This setting must be correct or else you may accidentally wipe out the hard disk instead.)
- clean (removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus)
- create partition primary
- select partition 1 (the only primary partition created by command above)
- active
- format fs=fat32 (use FAT32 file system)
- assign (assigns a drive letter or mount point to the volume with focus)
- exit
- Setup and customize Windows PE by following below instructions:
- Click on Windows Start menu, open All Programs (if applicable), and then Windows AIK program folder. Select and click “Windows PE Tools Command Prompt”.
- Type the following command:
Run Copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
If you want to create a 64-bit version of bootable USB flash disk, change the architecture from x86 to amd64. You may want to change the name of the folder too.
- You can customize WinPE by copying any tools possible needed and available to the C:\winpe_x86\iso folder. The utilities may include imaging tools for capturing images such as imagex, wimscript.ini and etc.
- Insert the USB key disk into the machine where WinPE is installed.
- Run the following command in command prompt to copy WinPE and its contents to the USB flash drive:
xcopy c:\winpe_x86\iso\*.* /s /e /f e:\
c: and e: represents drive where the WinPE files are located and USB flash drive respectively. Change the drive letter if it’s not the same.
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Entries (RSS)
June 16th, 2009 01:09
[...] found a description HERE. If you follow the instructions, it will work: the USB stick will boot … it will look like [...]
May 11th, 2009 05:28
The instructions are simple…if you know what you’re doing. If you dont, you probably shouldn’t bother and probably have no reason to load the Vista PE. (I only use it to troubleshoot bootup or OS installation issues.)
Only exception is step # 5. You don’t actually type RUN. Otherwise, it couldn’t get any simpler.
On a 512MB key, I still have about 200MB free…plenty of space for PortableApps.
I used MagicDisc (free virtual CD/DVD driver from MagicISO to mount the IMG file), in order to avoid burning the image to disk.
March 5th, 2009 23:49
[...] How to boot from a usb thumbdrive ? How to Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive or USB Key with Vista WinPE 2.0
February 18th, 2009 22:51
This will work on Windows XP. Instead of step 4, you need to format the thumb drive in NTFS. Then open a command prompt, and type:
cd C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x8
6
bootsect /nt60 k:
Follow the rest of the steps, and it should work.
January 9th, 2009 11:47
Not sure why y’all find this so hard to do. The steps worked fine for me.
October 4th, 2008 18:41
How big is this supposed to be, once you finish the last step? I’ve got 183MB, is that really windows? Or do I need to do something else?
September 10th, 2008 07:08
It’s actually quite easy but it’s best to install on a Vista / W2K8 machine and run with the Vista AIK SP1 installed; just follow the steps (make sure you adhere to the sequence of steps) and it is the greatedst thing because it doesn’t matter what the h/w platform, nic drivers or storage drives (and you can add them in later anyway) and it still boots! Remember to include Ghost32, not Ghost.exe
June 28th, 2008 05:17
Thanks, found it, have to burn the DVD see
http://www.mechrest.com/plugins/BartPEGuide/VistaPEGuide.htm
Downloading and Installing the Windows AIK:
1. Burn the download to a DVD. It comes in a .img format.
2.Insert the burned WAIK DVD and it should auto run. On the left side choose “Windows AIK Setup” to install the WAIK. The default location is C:\Program Files\Windows AIK.
June 28th, 2008 00:58
Help please!
I downloaded Windows AIK from : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C7D4BC6D-15F3-4284-9123-679830D629F2&displaylang=en.
But got an img file vista_6000.16386.061101-2205-LRMAIK_EN.img.
How do I get the Windows AIK progam file?
Thanks in advance, Gerhard
May 6th, 2007 00:34
Oh my, they’ve really been adding to this thing.
Look at all the plugins for this image.
http://vistape.boot-land.net/eng/screen.html
April 5th, 2007 15:35
That would depend on the size of the key. I wouldn’t try it with less than a gig. I still haven’t gotten this to work.
April 4th, 2007 22:53
How much free space is left on the key after installation?
April 4th, 2007 21:23
Sound like I don’t want to mess with this one. Unless someone wants to get it working and post an Acronis Universal Restore Image or something:)
April 4th, 2007 17:15
I was messing around with this today and it’s a bitch. It’s pretty much all command line work. You have to download this AIK thing, burn the DVD, install dot net 2.0. OK fine. Then figure out how to make a USB drive’s FAT32 partition active primary, which is for some reason maddeningly difficult. If I could find a simple straightforward utility to do this it would probably be a snap. And don’t reply “Fdisk, you ass” unless you have a link to download it and know that it will make a 32 bit primary active partition on a USB drive.
from what I am reading from the DVD contents, the USB key will have a (very) miniature Vista OS on it, it will not run more than 72 hours continuously. You will need some ram in the PC though.
April 3rd, 2007 22:30
Hi ,
is possible build a WinPe on external Usb Hdd or Key without loading ram ?
Thanks
AnyB
April 3rd, 2007 21:55
Do you have any snapshots?
Can you add Portable Applications?
April 3rd, 2007 20:54
So…is worth downloading if you don’t have a Vista-installed PC? Or am I going to need a vista disk to make this worth anything?