(iBoyd)

Deploy Vista install.wim on any drive you like (as long as it’s D:\)

By Boyd, December 3, 2008 11:34 am

Source: xkcd.com

While designing and testing a deployment process for Windows Vista using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 I ran into a seemingly obscure problem: Vista refused to use drive letter C as the OS Volume and instead chose D as the system drive letter. The result is that the root of the system drive was D:\ instead of C:\, which is something that legacy applications are not fond of.

This would seem like an easy problem to resolve. Surely, it is caused by the way the disk is partitioned or perhaps the drive letter that SCCM applies the image to is incorrect. Perhaps it’s a registry setting in the image file that needs to be modified offline. I experimented with all of these things, with no luck. Finally, I came across a technet blog entry that I had missed with previous Google search queries:

Several people have tried to use the install.wim from the Windows Vista installation media in an Install an existing image package task sequence. They are surprised to discover that, upon completion, the operating system is on the D: drive instead of the C: drive. The short explanation for why this happens is that the operating system volume for the images in install.wim is D:. In other words, when the image was captured, the reference machine had the operating system on volume D:. Why this is the case for the install.wim that ships on the Windows Vista installation media is beyond the scope of this blog.

So essentially, you can’t use the install.wim image from Vista in SCCM if you want to use C for the system drive letter. That would have been nice to know….