Using WDS to PXE Boot the Technician's Rescue Media

- Overview

- Extracting a WIM From a Rescue Media ISO

- Adding the WIM to WDS

Overview

To streamline deployment processes, it may be preferable to PXE boot the Deployment Kit's technician's rescue media over the network, removing the need for physical media. One way to achieve this is to take the WIM from a technician's rescue media and use it with WDS.

If you have not already done so, create a technician's rescue media ISO by following the steps in this article.

For scaled, network-based golden image deployment, Macrium SiteDeploy may be a more suitable solution. Macrium SiteDeploy includes an out-of-the-box PXE server, removing the need for WDS. Learn more about SiteDeploy in our SiteDeploy knowledge base here.

Extracting a WIM From a Rescue Media ISO

To extract the WIM file from a rescue media ISO, first mount the ISO file by right-clicking on the ISO, then selecting 'Mount':

The contents of the ISO file will then be accessible as a local drive:

The WIM file is found at '%MountedDriveLetter%\Sources\boot.wim'. Copy the 'boot.wim' file out of the mounted ISO, then unmount the ISO by right-clicking on the drive and selecting 'Eject':

Adding the WIM to WDS

In WDS, expand the 'Servers' tree, then expand the server that will be used to PXE boot the WIM. Right-click on the 'Boot Images' folder and select 'Add Boot Image...':

In the wizard that opens, select 'Browse' and navigate to where the WIM file, which was extracted earlier, is located:

On the next page of the wizard, a name and description can be specified to make identifying this boot option easier:

The next page of the wizard shows a summary of the WIM that will be added:

Select 'Next >' to add the WIM to WDS. Once the WIM has been added successfully, the following result will be displayed:

The WIM will now be shown in the 'Boot Images' section of WDS:

The technician's rescue media created by the Deployment Kit can now be PXE booted on the target endpoints.