Anyone know how to make a single 32/64bit win7 install ?

I'd like to combine the 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 installers onto a single USB drive. I swear I swa instructions once on how to combine the 32 and 64bit discs into a single install by doing a little bit of mild wim editing. (This way I can boot from the usb drive and install any ver of windows..)

I am also hoping to be able to get server 2008 r2 in there too. Any ideas?

EDIT: Found some instructions here: http://forum.pcstats.com/showthread.php?t=66758 I am going to give them a shot.

extide said:

I'd like to combine the 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 installers onto a single USB drive. I swear I swa instructions once on how to combine the 32 and 64bit discs into a single install by doing a little bit of mild wim editing. (This way I can boot from the usb drive and install any ver of windows..)

I am also hoping to be able to get server 2008 r2 in there too. Any ideas?

EDIT: Found some instructions here: http://forum.pcstats.com/showthread.php?t=66758 I am going to give them a shot.

Click to expand...

The big problem is if you use the boot files from the 32 bit you cannot do a boot repair of a 64 bit install and vice versa...

pcgeek11

put the installs in separate folders, then make a batch file with a list selection?
ie, "Press 1 for Win7 x32, Press 2 for Win7 x64, etc"?


edit: something like this maybe? not sure if a 3rd-party app would fit what you're wanting to do, but sounds like it'll do exactly what you want http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-createmultibootcd.htm

pcgeek11 said:

The big problem is if you use the boot files from the 32 bit you cannot do a boot repair of a 64 bit install and vice versa...

pcgeek11

Click to expand...

Ah, I was wondering what the differences between using the 32bit setup files vs the 64bit setup files.


So far I have it working with 19 different version of windows. The ISO is about 50MB too big to fit on a single sided DVD but I have it all working in USB HDD form.

Windows 7 Home Basic x64
Windows 7 Home Premium x64
Windows 7 Professional x64
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Windows 7 Enterprise x64
Windows 7 Starter x86
Windows 7 Home Basic x86
Windows 7 Home Premium x86
Windows 7 Professional x86
Windows 7 Ultimate x86
Windows 7 Enterprise x86
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (Full Installation)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard (Server Core Installation)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise (Full Installation)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise (Server Core Installation)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter (Full Installation)
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter (Server Core Installation)
Windows Web Server 2008 R2 (Full Installation)
Windows Web Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Installation)

I am going to see if I can skinny it down a bit more. It will be handy to have this disc...

DL DVD ftw? Might as well see if you can throw Vista or XP on there too. That would be a real challenge.

Vista or Server 2008 would be easy, as they use the 'new' wim based setup. I believe XP could be possible but it would be a lot harder. I have a bat file that pretty much builds this all once you extract out all the source cd's into the right folders. I can probably post it up and some instructions and stuff if people are interested.

If you live in the US, then why bother including Home Basic x86/x64 editions on the disc?

Great link posted BTW, used that to create my Windows 7 AIO DVD.

extide said:

Vista or Server 2008 would be easy, as they use the 'new' wim based setup. I believe XP could be possible but it would be a lot harder. I have a bat file that pretty much builds this all once you extract out all the source cd's into the right folders. I can probably post it up and some instructions and stuff if people are interested.

Click to expand...

I'd be interested in seeing that. Sounds like it would be pretty useful.

Here is the gist of how to do it:
-Install WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Toolkit)
-create a temp folder
-create a tools folder in the temp folder
-copy the files from the tools\x86 folder (in the WAIK install folder) to your temp\tools folder
-make a folder inside of your temp folder for each windows cd you want to source from (note the folder names I am using)



-here is the contents of my batch file


-running it will cause a single install.wim file to be created in your temp folder with everything in it. You can then use this wim file on your all in one cd. NOTE: This will take a while to do and you need a good amount of free HD space to run it all. If you have two hard drives you can make it so it drops the output on a second drive which will make it build a lot faster. (You would just need to change the path of the install.wim parameter in the command lines above, check out the imagex help screens for info, or if you arent sure what you are doing just leave it alone!) My resulting install.wim is 4.11GB.

-Make sure you read the basic instructions on here as you really need to know what you are doing here. All I am doing is a modified version of these same instructions but I am using more sources. This should be enough info to get you going, let me know if you guys need some help, it's pretty early, I may have missed something.

Great! Thanks for the info, I guess I know what I'll be working on later.

I use a different method that keeps both setups for 32 and 64 bit and the flash drive (UFD) boots into WinPE first.

Using a computer with Vista or Windows 7 open a command prompt and run diskpart. Find out which index your drive is by typing list disk. Something like this will return :

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ----- ----- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 465 GB 1024 KB
Disk 1 Online 139 GB 0 B
Disk 2 Online 69 GB 12 MB
Disk 3 Online 465 GB 1024 KB
Disk 4 Online 3812 MB 0 B

Now you need to find which disk (hard drive) is your usb flash drive or let's call call it a UFD for fun. This one is easy as it is the one listed in MB not GB so I used disk 4. The following commands will erase everything on your UFD so remember to back it up first. Enter the following commands using the correct disk index (it may be different than 4 on your computer) :

select disk 4
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 label="Name your UFD here" quick
exit

Get a WinPE 64 bit boot CD. Copy the contents to your UFD. You can now boot into WinPE off of the UFD. Next let's install Windows 7 x64. Get a Windows 7 x64 DVD and copy everything except for the boot.wim from the sources folder over to your UFD sources folder. When you boot into WinPE run sources\setup.exe from your UFD.

Now lets setup installing 32 bit Windows 7. Create folder on your UFD called W732. Copy the sources\boot.wim from a WinPE 32 bit boot CD to W732\WinPE32.wim on your UFD. Let's get a little more organized by renameing the sources folder on your UFD to W764 and the boot.wim file inside that folder to WinPE64.wim. Edit your BCD as follows but make sure you replace the "j:\" bit with the drive letter of your UFD.

bcdedit /store j:\boot\bcd /copy {default} /d "WinPEx32"

bcdedit /store j:\boot\bcd

Will return the following.

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {default}
displayorder {default}
{5c0d3254-ed01-11de-ba4f-000c2980dad1}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {default}
device ramdisk=[boot]\sources\boot.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}
path \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
description Windows Setup
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\sources\boot.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}
systemroot \windows
detecthal Yes
winpe Yes
ems Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {5c0d3254-ed01-11de-ba4f-000c2980dad1}
device ramdisk=[boot]\sources\boot.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}
path \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
description WinPEx32
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\sources\boot.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}
systemroot \windows
detecthal Yes
winpe Yes
ems Yes

See the second entry for Windows Boot Loader and the long string of random numbers next to identifier? That's the new GUID for your boot entry you just created. Copy that number including the {}. In the next steps replace {GUID} with that number. Next type in:

bcdedit /store j:\boot\bcd -set {GUID} device ramdisk=[boot]\W732\WinPE32.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}

bcdedit /store j:\boot\bcd -set {GUID} osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\W732\WinPE32.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}

If you boot from your UFD right now you'll notice two boot entries. Windows Setup and WinPEx32. The first option won't work since we changed the folder names so let's update that menu while we are here doing BCD stuff and change the sources folder for 64 bit. Type in:

bcdedit /store j:\boot\bcd -set {default} description WinPEx64

bcdedit /store boot\bcd -set {default} device ramdisk=[boot]\W764\WinPE64.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}

bcdedit /store boot\bcd -set {default} osdevice ramdisk=[boot]\W764\WinPE64.wim,{7619dcc8-fafe-11d9-b411-000476eba25f}

So now when you boot from your UFD you'll get two options. WinPEx64 and WinPEx32. Select the one that matches the OS platform you want to install. Once in WinPE at a command prompt run setup.exe from the corresponding folder. Bam! Windows 7 32 and 64 bit installs from a bootable UFD.

Windows XP is too hard, unfortunately it is not hardware or HAL independent like Vista and 7, so if you made a wim for Windows XP it will only work on one type of hardware, if you want to add different types of hardware, you can, but for the time and effort, why bother?

GushpinBob said:

If you live in the US, then why bother including Home Basic x86/x64 editions on the disc?

Click to expand...

I use Home Basic on my VMs to test compatibility and software. I have ten licenses for it, so why not? I've also used one of those on an older laptop that only needs to handle web-browsing. There are plenty of valid reasons to use it.