Deploy to a device (Industry 8.1)

  • Article

7/8/2014

Learn how to deploy a Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry (Industry 8.1) image from a reference device.

After you add features to your image, you are ready to deploy the Windows Embedded 8.1 Industry (Industry 8.1) operating system to your devices. To deploy it, we recommend that you use the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) that describes how to install the Windows Preinstallation Environment and then deploy your image to your devices.

For more information on deployment with the Windows ADK, see Basic Windows Deployment Step-by-Step Guide in the Windows ADK.

Deploy an image from a reference device

The deployment process performs several verifications, which rely on the target device's date and time settings. For optimal performance, confirm before deployment that the target device is set to the correct date and time.

Prerequisites

  • Reference device

    • A USB port.
    • Is configured to start from a USB device.
    • Your master image includes the features needed to meet your device requirements. For more information, see Edit an answer file.

  • Target device

    • Your target device matches the reference device hardware. Any hardware deviations may cause problems.

  • Other devices

    • An empty USB flash drive that has at least 4 gigabytes (GB) of free space. You will load Windows PE 4.0 on this USB drive.

    • An external storage device that uses the NTFS file system and has at least 8 GB of free space. This can be a second USB flash drive, an external hard drive, or a network location. These instructions assume that the external storage device is an external hard drive.
      To use a network location as the external storage device, type the following command to map a drive to the network location before you perform each step that uses the external drive:

      net use e: \\server\share

Install Windows PE and the image on the USB

  1. Connect the USB flash drive to your development system.

  2. To install Windows PE 4.0, at a command prompt, type the following command, where F is the drive letter for the USB flash drive:

    Copy MakeWinPEMedia /UFD C:\winpe_amd64 F:

Capture the image from the reference device

  1. Connect the USB flash drive to the reference device and then restart the device in Windows PE 4.0.

  2. Connect the external hard drive to the reference device.

  3. Prepare the image for deployment by using Sysprep to remove system-specific settings such as the computer security identifier (SID):

    Sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown

    When you deploy the image to a different device, the system regenerates the device-specific settings that were removed by Sysprep. For more information about Sysprep, see Sysprep Command-Line Settings on MSDN.

  4. To capture your master image using DISM, type the following command, where D refers to the drive that contains your image and E is the drive letter for the external hard drive:

    dism /Capture-Image /ImageFile:E:\MyImage.wim /CaptureDir:D:\ /Name:”Contoso"

    The Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool captures the Windows partition in a new image file.

Deploy and test the image

  1. On the target device, connect the external hard drive and then start the device in Windows PE 4.0.

  2. To apply your custom image by using DISM, type the following command, where E refers to the USB flash drive that contains your image and D is the drive on the target device:

    Dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:E:\MyImage.wim /ApplyDir:D:\ /Name:”Contoso"

  3. To configure the device to start the OS, use the BCDBoot tool to update the BCD store:

    bcdboot E:\Windows /l en-US

  4. Restart the system.

  5. Verify that your image is on the device and that it works as expected.

See Also

Concepts

Configure and deploy an image