Windows 10 making a iso from a usb drive with 3 partitions

I have a 16 gig 3 partotion usb flash drive. I would like to make a iso for testing on vmware workstation 17
Now on this drive will be the partition(s): boot,sources and apps
X,y,z
Now how do i make an iso of all three so i can on my answer file tell it to installs all drivers and apps in a batch file before oobe appears starts os there a way to do this?
Please tell what iso creator to use!

Windows 10 pro!

JTM

Unfortunately, you don't :-(

ISO images are basically images of optical media which doesn't support partitioning.

As a workaround, you can create 3 separate ISO images and attach each of these to your VM at the same time.

As far as an answer file goes, note that you can create a separate ISO image with the answer file, either with or without any other data on it - it does not need to reside on the ISO image that has the OS. This works because Windows Setup will look at the root of all accessible drives at startup for an answer file.

In fact, I take advantage of this constantly. I don't want to have to modify my Windows image every time I want to use an answer file, especially since I have a collection of about 20 different answer files. So, I simply create little bitty tiny ISO images that have nothing on them but my answer file and I connect this to the VM along with my Windows image. Works like a charm!

If you need any further details, please do feel free to let me know. I would be happy to help.

can I put the answer file in the system32 of a working windows 10 ?
Can I also use RunAsyncronous to call the batch file ?
The batch file has all the drivers being installed ??
John

The System32 folder is not the right place for an unattended answer file. If must be placed in the root of the media. The root of a drive is the only place that Windows will look for an unattended answer file.

RunAsyncronous is appropriate for running individual commands. You can't run an installer from there. Even if you could run an installer from there, how would you know what path to specify? There is no telling what drive letter your installation media got assigned.

There are other ways to handle the installation of the drivers.

My personal preference is this:

On the system to which you plan to perform an unattended installation, export all your drivers from the working system. This can be done with a single command like this:

pnputil /export-driver * C:\Driver_Backups

Save this to a safe location. Perform your unattended installing. After the installation run a single command to restore all the drivers like this:

pnputil /add-driver D:\Driver_Backups\*.inf /subdirs /install

If you need any more info, please do let me know.

EDIT: Another good method is to inject all the drivers into the Windows image. That way, they will all get installed along with Windows and this works whether or not you install Windows unattended or not. If you need details, let me know.

Even if I use autounattend.xsl and.put it in.the root directory ?

- - - Updated - - -

How do i inject them into the windows image? They are all in executable format.

1) Mount the Windows ISO image by double clicking it.

2) Copy all files to a folder on your HDD.

3) Copy the autounattend.xml file to the root of that folder.

4) Re-burn the image.

IMPORTANT: For step 4, you need to make sure that you use a program smart enough to make this a boot Windows image. Since you are working with unattended answer files, my assumption is that you likely have the Windows ADK installed. You can use the ADK utility called OSCDIMG to create the ISO image. Here are my notes to myself on burning the image using OSCDIMG:

Use the following syntax to create a bootable ISO image using the Microsoft OSCDIMG utility:

oscdimg -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -l"VolumeName" -bootdata:2#p0,e,b"c:\project\ISO_Files\boot\etfsboot.com"#pEF,e,b"c:\project\ISO_Files\efi\microsoft \boot\efisys.bin" "c:\project\ISO_Files" "c:\destination\image.iso"

Please be careful with the above syntax. This is all ne very long command. There are no spaces in a lot of the areas you might normally expect spaces.

In the above syntax, note the following:

VolumeName - This is the volume name to assign to the image. When burned to a DVD or Blu-Ray disc, the disc would show this name for the volume name. The maximum length of the volume name is 32 characters. To omit a volume name, you can use -L"" or you can leave off the -L "VolumeName" parameter altogether.

c:\project\ISO_Files - this is the location where the Windows files are located.

c:\destination\image.iso - This is the full path and file name of the ISO image you want to create.

NOTE: For any paths that include spaces, make sure to include the path in double quote marks (").

If it is only adding an xml file, easier to add the file to the iso using an isohandler.

anyburn free will do.

However if you are integrating drivers into a wim, you need to extract them from the executable first.

SIW2 said:

If it is only adding an xml file, easier to add the file to the iso using an isohandler.

anyburn free will do.

However if you are integrating drivers into a wim, you need to extract them from the executable first.

SIW2 makes an excellent point. There are a lot of ISO image handling programs that let you open an ISO image, then you can simply drop your answer file it and save the changes. It will keep all the existing attributes such as keeping the image bootable, etc.

However, as noted before, you can also create a separate ISO image that contains nothing more that the answer file. Any image burning software can create the ISO image because there are zero special attributes needed. It doesn't need to be bootable or anything else. Again, I like that methos because it requires absolutely zero modification to you original Windows ISO image.

Quick question just so that I can make sure I give you proper instructions.

Am I understanding correctly that you would like to add all the drivers for your ASUS based system to your Windows ISO image? This would allow you to install Windows from scratch and all the drivers will already be installed when setup is finished.

If that is indeed the goal, I can give you step-by-step directions to doing this.

If I understood your goal correctly, please also answer these questions for me:

1) Do you currently have Windows installed on that system with all the drivers already installed? If so, this will make life a lot easier for us . We can use the already installed drivers without the need to grab any drivers fromASUS.

2) If I provide to you the option of running a bunch of commands to do this or the option to run a program I wrote that will do this for you automatically, which would you prefer? If you want both options, I can provide that to you as well.