Boot Windows PE from a RAM Disk (Standard 7 SP1)

7/8/2014

After creating a custom image of Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 3.0, you must decide how to boot the image. For information about creating a custom Windows PE image, see Create a Custom Windows PE Image.

When you start a computer from a hard disk drive or optical drive, Windows keeps the operating system file handles open and dedicated to the instance of Windows. You cannot delete the hard disk drive partition from which you start the computer. You also cannot remove the CD or DVD that you use to start the computer.

With Windows PE, to avoid these complications, you can load the entire Windows PE image into RAM and then start the computer from the RAM disk. The RAM disk boot provides a virtual-CD file system in memory. By booting Windows PE from a RAM disk, you can do the following:

• Swap the CD or DVD that you use to start the computer with another CD or DVD that adds drivers, utilities, applications, or an image of Windows Embedded Standard 7.
• Start the computer from a Windows Deployment Services or Pre-Boot Execution Environment (PXE) server and then disconnect the computer from the network after Windows PE loads. After downloading the Windows PE image, there is no dependency on network resources.
• Delete and repartition the hard disk drive from which you started Windows PE.
• Decrease the boot time.

By default, Windows PE assigns the drive letter X to the media from which it boots. You can change the drive location using the dism /Set-TargetPath command-line option. For more information, see Windows PE Servicing Command-Line Options.

To boot Windows PE From a RAM disk

1. Verify that the computers that you want to boot with Windows PE meet the following requirements:

   • They are x86 or amd64 architecture.
   • They have sufficient RAM to load the custom Windows PE image.
     Loading the default Windows PE image into RAM requires a minimum of 512 MB of RAM.

2. Choose one of the following methods for booting Windows PE from a RAM disk:

   • CD or DVD.
     For more information, see Boot Windows PE from RAM Using a CD.
   • USB flash device (UFD).
     For more information, see Boot Windows PE from RAM Using a UFD.
   • Hard disk drive.
     For more information, see Boot Windows PE from RAM Using a Hard Disk Drive.
   • Windows Deployment Services server.
     You can access the image by using PXE Boot.
   • A supported PXE server.
     You can access the image by using PXE Boot.

See Also

Tasks

Boot Windows PE from a CD
Boot Windows PE from a Hard Drive