Reading through the What’s New in Windows PE documentation, you might notice that it says the ARM64 platform was added in the Windows 8.1 timeframe, which I suppose is technically true - if you were an OEM creating Windows RT devices they could get an ARM64 add-on. You might not have realized that there was an ARM64 option, but there is. The “amd64” one is likely what you need (for both Intel and AMD-based 64-bit Windows installations), but if you’re still using legacy boot (not UEFI) and deploying x86 images, you can still create a 32-bit one as well. Next, we want to create images for the needed platforms. Hard-coding is bad, so let’s look up the location from the registry. So how do you start? Simple, you need to find the right files from the ADK. That said, there’s still a resistance to doing that - usually you are stuck waiting for a new release, with community-published workarounds until then.) The current version of the ADK is still 2004 (not 20H2), and it’s quite possible that version will remain current for a while. Windows PE was split out mainly so that it would be easier to update with fixes, separate from the rest of the ADK kit tools. (The Windows PE add-on is something relatively new. The easiest way to do that is to analyze a script in chunks I’ll attach the full script at the bottom of this post.įirst, you need to install the Assessment and Deployment Kit, and then the Windows PE add-on, as described in the docs. Let’s walk through the steps, using something a little more modern than a batch file: PowerShell. MDT, SCCM, etc.) do it for them.īut it is a skill worth having, if nothing else so that you understand the process. Still, most people never worried about the process, or complained about the instructions, because they never created a boot image on their own they let a tool (e.g.

(I’ll avoid getting into the history here, but I may revisit that with a future post.) But the instructions for creating a Windows PE image of your own have been pretty much stuck in time: simplistic batch files.

Windows PE has been around for quite a while.

Make your own windows