Create a bootable Windows PE 3.0 USB drive with rescue tools – Part 1

Learn how to create a bootable Windows PE 3.0 USB drive. First you you create the bootable USB stick, then you copy the WinPE 3.0 files to the drive.

By Michael Pietroforte - Mon, April 12, 2010 - 61 comments 

Michael Pietroforte is the founder and editor of 4sysops. He is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) with more than 30 years of experience inSYSTEM administration.

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Contents of this article

• Create a bootable USB drive
• Copy the WinPE 3.0 files to the USB drive

Update: There is now an easier way to create Windows PE boot media.

For Windows PE 1.0, the minimalist Windows based on Windows 2003/XP, you needed an SA (Software Assurance), OEM, or ISV license. When Windows Vista was released everyone had access to Windows PE 2.0. This also applies to the Windows 7-based edition, Windows PE 3.0. Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment) was originally designed to deploy Windows. However, it is also useful inCREATING YOUR OWN customized rescue boot media. In this article, I will describe how you can create a bootable Windows PE 3.0 (WinPE) USB stick, and, in my next post, I will show how to add your own rescue tools and how to keep your rescue stick up-to-date without much hassle. You will see that the procedure described here is much more convenient than most solutions you’ll find on the web.

Create a bootable USB drive ^

Before you getSTARTED, you have to make your flash drive bootable. I have already described thisPROCEDURE in my post about the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. For your convenience here is the command sequence, which you should run on a command prompt with admin rights:

1. diskpart
2. list disk
3. select disk #
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. select partition 1
7. ACTIVE
8. format quick fs=fat32
9. ASSIGN
10. exit

Replace ‘#’ with the drive number of your USB drive. Be careful to choose the right disk in 3 because this procedure will erase the whole drive!

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Copy the WinPE 3.0 files to the USB drive ^

WinPE 3.0 is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7, which you canDOWNLOAD here. Once you have installed the WAIK, you’ll find a folder of the Windows AIK on the WindowsSTART Menu. Launch the Deployment Tools Command Prompt and enter this command:

1. copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
2. Then, copy winpe.wim to the correct folder:
   copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim
3. Now, copy WinPE to your USB drive:
   xcopy C:\winpe_x86\iso\*.* /e G:\

In this example, ‘G:’ is the drive letter of your flash drive.

Now you should be able to boot from your WinPE 3.0 USB drive. In my next post, I will outline theINTERESTING part—that is, how to prepare your USB drive so that you can add new tools withoutSTARTING again from scratch.