The Windows AIK is a set of
tools for deploying the latest version of Windows. The following tools
are either included with or provided by the Windows AIK:
Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM) Enables you to create answer files (unattend.xml) and distribution shares for performing unattended installation of Windows
Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) Enables you to boot bare-metal systems to deploy Windows on them
ImageX Enables you to capture, modify, and apply file-based images for rapid deployment
In addition to these tools, installing the Windows AIK also provides:
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) tools for building diagnostic and recovery solutions based on Windows PE.
Additional
command-line tools such as Pkgmgr.exe, PEImg.exe, and others. These
tools are discussed in later sections of this appendix.
Documentation in the form of Windows Help (.chm) files.
More Info: Built-in tools
Some built-in
operating system tools can be useful for deployment. Examples of such
tools include DiskPart, BCDEdit, and others. This is discussed further
in the next section and in the Command-Line Tools Technical Reference
section of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) User’s
Guide.
To implement actual
deployment, however, the Windows AIK tools listed here aren’t enough.
Instead, these tools need to interact with other Windows technologies
and components, including the following:
Windows Setup The program that installs Windows on a bare-metal system or upgrades previous versions of Windows
Windows Image (.wim) file A single compressed file used to duplicate a Windows installation onto a disk volume
Windows Deployment Services (Windows DS or WDS) (optional)
Used to install Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista or Windows Server
2008 remotely without the need of visiting each destination computer
Figure 1 shows the architecture of the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista deployment platforms.
Comparing Deployment Tools for Different Windows Versions
Table 1
provides a quick (but not exhaustive) comparison between the various
tools and technologies used for deploying Windows Server 2008 and
Windows Vista and the deployment tools used for the previous Windows
versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional. If you are
familiar with all the various tools used for deploying Windows Server
2003 and Windows XP, this table will provide a quick way of updating
your deployment skills to support Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista
deployments. In addition, you can find more information concerning them
in the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) User’s Guide.
Table 1. Comparison of Deployment Tools and Technologies for Windows XP /
Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008
| Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP | Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista |
|---|
| Answer File Tools and Settings | |
| Setup Manager | Windows SIM |
| Plaintext answer files | XML answer files |
| Multiple answer files | Only two answer files |
| Unattend.txt | Unattend.xml (or Autounattend.xml) |
| Winnt.sif | Oobe.xml (used primarily for Vista) |
| Winborn.ini | |
| Oobeinfo.ini | |
| Sysprep.inf | |
| Cmdlines.txt | RunSynchronous |
| [GUIRunOnce] section | FirstLogonCommands |
| $OEM$ folders | Data image (though $OEM$ is still supported using configuration sets) |
| Windows PE Versions | |
| Windows PE 1.0 | Windows PE 2.0 |
| Disk Imaging Tools | |
| Must use third-party tools | ImageX |
| Windows Setup | |
| Winnt.exe and Winnt32.exe | Setup.exe |
| Adding Device Drivers | |
| OEMPnPDriverPath | Package Manager |
| Adding Language Support | |
| MUI files | Language packs |
The sections that
follow examine the various Windows AIK tools in more detail and the
enhancements made to these tools in Windows AIK 1.1.
