Adding drivers into WinPE boot image (WIM-file) for use with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT)

WinPE is the preinstallation environment which will mostly be used to load an OS onto a new system. This article will explain how to inject LAN drivers into WinPE, allowing you to deploy OS installations to a larger variety of hardware. You will need to have the Microsoft WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) installed to modify the image. WAIK provides the command line tools for working with WIM images, the image format used by Windows and WinPE.

Open the WinPE Command Prompt by Clicking Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Windows AIK -> Windows PE Tools Command Prompt.

Create an empty folder which you will use to mount the WinPE image:

mkdir D:\mount

Locate your WinPE boot image. For example:
D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\LiteTouchPE_x86.wim

Mount the image using the following command, substituting your own mount path and WinPE image.  (Note: each WIM file can contain multiple images, use the imagex /info command to locate the correct number for your boot image)
imagex /mountrw D:\RemoteInstall\Boot\LiteTouchPE_x86.wim 1 D:\mount

Locate the INF file for your network driver. Use the following command to inject the driver, subsituting your own driver INF and mount path.
peimg /inf=D:\<driverpath>\<driver>.INF /image=D:\mount

Commit the changes to the image.
imagex /unmount /commit D:\mount

Make sure you’ve a copy of the orriginal WIM file, so you can always replace a backup of this file.

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