Windows Preinstallation Environment, without having to rely on Windows. Windows
PE is a lightweight version of Windows that can run entirely from memory and can
be used to install Windows from local media or a network drive or perform
-maintenance. Windows PE is the operating systems runs when you boot from the
-Windows DVD.
+maintenance. Windows PE is the operating system that runs when you boot from
+the Windows DVD.
You can find Windows PE on the ISO filesystem on the installation DVD for both
Windows 7 and Windows 8. I don't have a DVD for Vista but it should be on there
-too. The Windows PE image a WIM file, `sources/boot.wim', on the ISO
+too. The Windows PE image is a WIM file, `sources/boot.wim', on the ISO
filesystem. Windows PE can also be found in the Windows Automated Installation
Kit (WAIK), which is free to download from Microsoft, inside the `WinPE.cab'
-file, which you can extract if you install the `cabextract' program.
+file, which you can extract if you install either the `cabextract' or `p7zip'
+programs.
wimlib provides a public API for other programs to use, but also comes with two
programs: `imagex' and `mkwinpeimg'.
image of Windows PE that can be put on a CD or USB drive, or published on a
server for PXE booting. See the main page `doc/mkwinpeiso.1' for more details.
-Wimlib can also be used to handle larger WIM files such as the `install.wim'
-file that comes on the Windows DVD; however, this has not been well tested.
+wimlib can also be used to handle larger WIM files such as the `install.wim'
+file that comes on the Windows DVD. You may not, however, losslessly capture
+and apply Windows installations using wimlib because of issues with NTFS and
+Windows-specific information.
An earlier version of Wimlib is being used to deploy Windows 7 from the Ultimate
Deployment Appliance. For more information see
http://www.ultimatedeployment.org/.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
CONFIGURATION
Besides the various well-known options, the following options can be passed to
Include more debugging messages. Only use this option if you have found
a bug in the library.
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
DEPENDENCIES
Wimlib requires libxml2 to build. This is a commonly used free library to read
you have the libfuse package installed (libfuse-dev if your distribution
distributes header files separately). FUSE also requires a kernel module. If
the kernel module is available it will automatically be loaded if you try to
-mount a WIM file. Wimlib has only been tested with the Linux version of FUSE.
-For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/.
+mount a WIM file. For more information see http://fuse.sourceforge.net/. FUSE
+is also available for FreeBSD.
The `mkwinpeimg' shell script will look for several other programs depending on
what options are given to it. Depending on your GNU/Linux distribution, you may
Retrieving files from the Windows Automated Installation Kit requires
`cabextract' (http://www.cabextract.org.uk).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
PORTABILITY
wimlib has mostly been developed and tested on x86_64 (64-bit) GNU/Linux.
There are no plans to port wimlib to Windows since the programming interface on
Windows is very different and Microsoft's imagex.exe is already available.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
REFERENCES
The WIM file format is specified in a document that can be found in the
lzx-comp.c, the code to compress WIM file resources using LZX compression, is
originally based on code written by Matthew Russotto (www.russotto.net/chm/).
-lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches, is based on code from zlib.
+lz.c, the code to find LZ77 matches (used for both XPRESS and LZX compression),
+is based on code from zlib.
A very limited number of other free programs can handle some parts of the WIM
-file format. 7-zip is able to extract and create WIMs and files in many other
-archive formats. However, WIMLIB is designed specifically to handle WIM files
-and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's imagex.exe, such
-as the ability to mount WIMs read-write.
-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+file format. 7-zip is able to extract and create WIMs (as well as files in many
+other archive formats). However, wimlib is designed specifically to handle WIM
+files and provides features previously only available in Microsoft's imagex.exe,
+such as the ability to mount WIMs read-write as well as read-only, and the
+ability to create LZX or XPRESS compressed WIMs.
MORE INFORMATION
enter the directory `doc' and run `doxygen'. The HTML documentation will be
created in a directory named `html'.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
LICENSE
Wimlib is released under the GNU LGPL version 2.1 or later. The files in the
`programs' directory are released under the GPL version 3.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
DISCLAIMER
Wimlib is experimental. Use Microsoft's `imagex.exe' if you want to make sure
ebiggers3@gmail.com) if you find a bug.
Some parts of the WIM file format are poorly documented or even completely
-undocumented, so these parts had to be reverse engineered.
+undocumented, so I've just had to do the best I can to read and write WIMs that
+appear to be compatible with Microsoft's software.