Create Windows 10 ISO image from Existing Installation  

Hey all, and thanks Kari for an excellent tutorial. I am having trouble with Windows 10 Education and creating an image, however. I can successfully capture the WIM, create the ISO, and create a bootable drive, but when I go to install it on a machine it says that it can't find install files. I'm thinking this is due in part because the particular ISO I get from VLSC gives me the option to install Pro, Education, or Enterprise (all with N flavors or not) upon installing from the raw ISO and when I create the ISO with my custom WIM it's maybe looking for the other Pro, Edu, and Ent options. Has anybody run into this problem, and if so how could I circumvent it? Could I use the Pro ISO from Microsoft directly, or would that make a difference and would actually install Pro rather than Edu? I absolutely need Edu, so there's no losing that.

Thanks!

lteffertiller said:

Hey all, and thanks Kari for an excellent tutorial. I am having trouble with Windows 10 Education and creating an image, however. I can successfully capture the WIM, create the ISO, and create a bootable drive, but when I go to install it on a machine it says that it can't find install files. I'm thinking this is due in part because the particular ISO I get from VLSC gives me the option to install Pro, Education, or Enterprise (all with N flavors or not) upon installing from the raw ISO and when I create the ISO with my custom WIM it's maybe looking for the other Pro, Edu, and Ent options. Has anybody run into this problem, and if so how could I circumvent it? Could I use the Pro ISO from Microsoft directly, or would that make a difference and would actually install Pro rather than Edu? I absolutely need Edu, so there's no losing that.

Thanks!

@Kari, I have the same question. Please help. 🤔

Kari said:

Windows Setup not finding install files can be caused by for instance wrong product key in answer file, either a key for an edition not present in ISO, or key has typos.

Important to remember is that a captured WIM image only contains one edition. IF you do the customizing in reference machine running W10 Education, then sysprep it and capture the WIM image, it only contains Education edition and therefore a product key used in answer file must be for Education (generic, VL / MAK, retail).

Kari

Kari, thanks for the explanation. Much appreciated.

Hello, Kari thanks for great tutorial. i have some questions i use vmware workstation to create windows 10 custom install.wim with fully updated windows, and soft broswers, messangers and etc, which steps i need to skip?

Hi Kari,

First of all thanks for sharing the tutorial

I've followed all the steps by the letter, but i'm getting a error 32 on image capture using dism(pre-boot env.). the only thing i'm not sure about it that i've used google chrome to download some apps. (haven't opened/run any of them) now chrome is also one of my wanted software programs so i left it installed on the source pc. I checked all the boxes with diskclean and sysprep worked without issues.

any idea what could've gone wrong ?

Any / all help would be very much appreciated!

kind regards,

Ed

Thanks that's usefull

thanks it's useful