Walkthrough: Servicing a Mounted Windows Image Offline

Article
07/25/2008

Offline servicing of a mounted Windows image is done with Package Manager and an unattended installation answer file that is created with Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM). You can add or remove packages and configure any settings that are available in the offlineServicing configuration pass.

Prerequisites

Before you can mount and modify a Windows image by using ImageX, you must install the Windows OPK tools or Windows AIK tools on the technician computer.

Procedures

Creating an Answer File

To create an answer file

Open Windows SIM.
If you are adding a driver package, then configure the settings in the Microsoft-Windows-PnPCustomizationsNonWinPE component.

For more details on driver packages, see Add Device Drivers to an Offline Windows Image.
Click Insert on the main menu, and select Package(s).
Browse to a package, and click Open.
You can configure any other settings available in the offlineServicing configuration pass. All other settings are ignored.
Validate and save the answer file as Unattend.xml.

Finding the Desired Image in a .wim File

To find the desired image

Copy a .wim file to C:\wim.
At a command prompt, change to the directory for the installed architecture in the Windows OPK\Tools directory. For example,
```
cd c:\program files\windows opk\tools\x86
```
Type the following command.
```
imagex /info c:\wim\install.wim
```

Mounting an Image

To mount an image with read/write permission

Create a folder for your mounted image (for example, C:\Mount).
At a command prompt, mount the image. For example,
```
imagex /mountrw c:\wim\install.wim 1 c:\mount
```

Adding the Package to the Image

To add the package to the image

Create a log folder at C:\log.

At a command prompt, type the following command.

start /w pkgmgr /o:c:\mount;c:\mount\windows /n:c:\unattend.xml /l:c:\log\logfile.txt

Check the log file to verify that the package was successfully added.

Committing the Changes and Unmounting the Image

To commit the changes and unmount the image

At a command prompt, type the following command.
```
imagex /commit /unmount c:\mount
```

Next Step

This walkthrough illustrates basic offline servicing of a mounted Windows image. Once the Windows image has been serviced and unmounted, you can apply the image by using ImageX or run Windows Setup to install the Windows image. For more information, see Apply an Image. After installation is complete, test and validate the Windows image.