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Maybe you could try by modifying WinPE images [0]. They're quite lightweight. WinPE has been around since Windows XP and it's updated regularly. The last versio

Maybe you could try by modifying WinPE images [0]. They're quite lightweight. WinPE has been around since Windows XP and it's updated regularly. The last version matches with Windows 11 incoming release. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Enviro...

stragies 5y ago
Projects that build upon WindowsPE have existed since Win2k, several of those can be found on github, some updated over the years to use newer base images. But I always wondered about the legality of using that approach to create a windows Image you could boot of a USB stick, or even a Boot-image server over network. Afaik, WinPE is the engine under the installation system in older version, and can only be legally used in workflows peripheral to System installation/debug/repair. Windows Embedded seems to be the MS-preferred approach these days if you need a custom-purpose Windows installation. How to get/use Windows Embedded legally without an Enterprise agreement has be on my "look-into-it-some-day"-list, but since I don't have/use Windows-only tools in my daily workflows, the urgency has been somewhat steadily decreasing.
ulzeraj 5y ago
WinPE is super convenient. I've used to build Linux USB installers for PoS systems. Some of these systems used some kind of flashable custom keyboard that most of the time had to be programmed in place and the proprietary software ran on Windows. I've build a 100MB-ish image containing the current version of WinPE and the program along with its library dependencies. I think I had to download some kind of special blob to that Syslinux could load it into memory. I also remember booting a small WinPE ISO into the server virtual ISO ILO function to repair remote Windows servers on remote retail stores. Pretty much all the disk related stuff is included. That particular ISO had the proprietary drivers for the server raid controllers. Anyway very good stuff if you only need to run some old style software that doesn't require multitasking.

stragies 5y ago

Projects that build upon WindowsPE have existed since Win2k, several of those can be found on github, some updated over the years to use newer base images. But I always wondered about the legality of using that approach to create a windows Image you could boot of a USB stick, or even a Boot-image server over network. Afaik, WinPE is the engine under the installation system in older version, and can only be legally used in workflows peripheral to System installation/debug/repair. Windows Embedded seems to be the MS-preferred approach these days if you need a custom-purpose Windows installation. How to get/use Windows Embedded legally without an Enterprise agreement has be on my "look-into-it-some-day"-list, but since I don't have/use Windows-only tools in my daily workflows, the urgency has been somewhat steadily decreasing.

ulzeraj 5y ago

WinPE is super convenient. I've used to build Linux USB installers for PoS systems. Some of these systems used some kind of flashable custom keyboard that most of the time had to be programmed in place and the proprietary software ran on Windows. I've build a 100MB-ish image containing the current version of WinPE and the program along with its library dependencies. I think I had to download some kind of special blob to that Syslinux could load it into memory. I also remember booting a small WinPE ISO into the server virtual ISO ILO function to repair remote Windows servers on remote retail stores. Pretty much all the disk related stuff is included. That particular ISO had the proprietary drivers for the server raid controllers. Anyway very good stuff if you only need to run some old style software that doesn't require multitasking.