How To: Load a Recovery Drive's Factory.Wim image - Question

[mpbaker82]

Does anyone here have any experience using a PCs Factory.wim image (located in the recovery partition) to restore a laptop to factory defaults?

Let me know
Michael

 

[FaatehRehman]

You just have to deploy the image after formatting the C: drive, and it will take care of itself on next boot.

 

[mpbaker82]

explain deploy the image? my image is just over 8Gb in size and i cant use oscdimg to convert the image to iso.

The file size is to large.

How can i use this factory.wim image to reimage my broke down PC ?

 

[FaatehRehman]

Well you dont have to convert it to iso and perform a regular install. The .wim is catered for your system so you just need to sort of restore it.
Boot up in Hiren's WindowsPE or any other, and use something like GImageX to apply the image.

 

[mpbaker82]

i have booted to winpe (im fairly certin its an older version of winpe but non the less winpe.

I figured i have to mount the USB were my image is located.

Then use Imagex to apply the image. is this true?

Does anyone know the cmd for this? also, just because i apply the image dont mean it will boot directly to it. Wont i have to apply the BDCBoot cmd at the end?

 

[FaatehRehman]

I dont know the exact command of ImageX, let me check, but it is so much easier with GImageX.

 

[mpbaker82]

ok update...
i was able to apply the factory.wim file using imagex.
i then had to find a bcdboot file for the drive else it would not boot.

Windows booted to vista and prompted for user name and password.

once on the desktop I noticed that something was not right. I could not even do a system update. the OS was very limited. definitely not what i got from the factory.

ill check out the link your provided


any ideas?