Everybody knows about the bootable Linux Live disks using which you can use Linux operating systems without actually having to install anything on your computer. Linux Live disk loads everything into the system RAM and you can use Linux as usual. But not many people know about the Windows PE (pre-installation environment) disks which work in a similar manner. If you have a bootable Windows PE disk, then you can use a limited version of Windows on your PC without actually installing anything on your system. Windows PE disks are helpful when your regular operating systems are having problems and you want to fix something.
With the help of Win10PE SE, you can create your own bootable Windows 10 PE disk. For this, you would need Win10PE SE and your Windows 10 DVD. Using it, you can create lightweight and customized Windows 10 PE disks containing software of your choice. Here is how:
- Copy all files from Windows 10 installation DVD to a folder, e.g., D:\Win10DVD\
- Download Win10PE SE from http://win10se.cwcodes.net/.
- Extract all the contents from the downloaded ZIP to a folder, e.g., D:\Win10PESE\
- Launch BuilderSE.exe from this folder. Switch to the Script tab. Browse and select source directory to the folder where you copied Windows DVD files (in our case it is D:\Win10DVD). Then click on Set Source.
- You can choose all the options, apps, and plugins that you want to include in the PE image from the left side. You can also download plugins and scripts from the internet by clicking on the download button near the top-right corner.
- Click on the Play button and relax. It will take a long time while building your customized Windows 10 PE image. During the process, it will extract files from WIM files and may also download new files from the internet.
After the process has finished, you will find the ISO image in the ISO sub-folder located inside the folder where we extracted Win10PESE files. In the above example, it will be placed inside the D:\Win10PESE\ISO\ folder. You can now use this ISO to create bootable DVD through software like ImgBurn or a bootable USB drive using Rufus.