There is a version of Windows that you probably have never heard of before, but have used
without realizing it.
It's called Windows PE.
Now, when I say a version of Windows, you might be thinking something like Windows 10
Pro or Home, but I don't mean that kind of version.
On the contrary, Windows PE is not made for just general daily computer use at all, but
it is still very useful.
For example, for creating bootable USB rescue drives that you can use to save your computer
if it is broken and won't boot, or something like that.
So in this video, I'm going to explain what is Windows PE all about, and also how you
can create your very own Windows PE bootable disk, if you want, from your own computer,
so stick around.
But before we continue, I want to thank today's sponsor, Morning Brew, the free, high-quality,
daily newsletter that will keep you up to date on the latest in tech, business, and
finance in just five minutes from Monday to Sunday.
It's a much better way to start the day than what I used to do, which I don't know about
you, was mostly just spending a bunch of time reading useless crap on social media.
Unlike traditional media though, Morning Brew only curates the most relevant and informative
stories.
For example, just the other day I was reading it and learned that Las Vegas is apparently
getting the world's first cloud 5G network, which is the latest marketing buzz, which
means that companies are going to start building backbones of 5G networks on Amazon's Web Services
in the cloud, not just using their own data centers.
So this could potentially allow the faster rollout of additional 5G networks around the
nation.
Good to know.
To sign up for Morning Brew, which again is completely free, just go to the link in the
description and then enter the email address you want to get the daily newsletter delivered
to, and that's it.
And so, with all that being said, let's continue.
All right.
So what exactly is Windows PE anyway?
Well, it stands for pre-installation environment, and it's basically a very stripped down, lightweight
version of Windows.
It's mostly used for things like deployment of Windows, meaning the installation of Windows,
maybe on hundreds of computers for an organization or just one computer, your installation.
Or it can be used for troubleshooting and running outside of the normal Windows installation,
if it won't run.
Because unlike a full version of Windows, Windows PE is designed to be so lightweight
that it can be booted from a portable device such as a USB drive, and it can be as small
as just 300 megabytes to run.
And these Windows PE installations are created using the so-called Windows Assessment and
Deployment Kit or ADK, which is a tool that is free to download from Microsoft off their
website.
And like I said before, you probably have actually used a version of Windows PE before,
without realizing it.
For example, the installation of Windows, when you insert the Windows installation disk
or USB disk, that actually boots up using Windows PE, and then installs it from there
to the full version.
Or the Windows recovery environment.
If Windows fails to boot up, then it brings up a bunch of tools and stuff, and that's
all running in Windows PE, which kind of makes sense.
It's good to have a super alternative, lightweight operating system that can boot up if the main
one isn't working, and that can potentially be used to fix the main one.
If you saw one of my previous videos talking about different USB boot drive and rescue
disks you can create, you might've heard me talk about Hiren Boot CD, which is a rescue
disk that has a bunch of tools on it, and that actually is built using Windows PE.
It looks like Windows 10 and they added stuff in like the shell to make it actually look
like that and all those other tools.
But even though it looks like a regular version of Windows with the whole full desktop interface
and stuff, make no mistake, it's not a full version of Windows, and it's very limited.
It's really only good for some of the bare basics, like maybe web browsing.
This is not something you could use for daily browsing and daily usage because it doesn't
have, for example, all the dynamic link libraries and backend software that Windows has, that
a lot of software relies on.
So you're not going to be playing any games or anything like this, or running complicated
software.
You can't even install anything to it because it doesn't have all the stuff that all those
other softwares rely on.
The reason you can add tools and stuff to it is because a lot of those tools have portable
versions where everything needed to run those programs is contained with it, alongside it,
but stuff that you have to actually download and install probably wouldn't work.
But again, it's still very useful because it's able to run a lot of those useful tools
outside of Windows.
So why don't I go over how you can build your very own USB boot drive with Windows PE on
it.
Again, it's going to be kind of limited, so you might just be better off downloading a
pre-made one with a bunch of tools added, but this will still be pretty interesting
because it goes over a lot of stuff you probably didn't even know was in Windows and maybe
better understanding in the future could potentially mean that you can fix things better in the
future.
So the first thing you're going to have to do is go on Microsoft's website.
Again, I'll put the links in the description and download the Windows ADK, Assessment and
Deployment Toolkit.
After you download and run it, it may actually say that you already have Windows ADK installed
in which case you could uninstall it and re-install this one to update it, or you could try the
rest of this without updating.
I don't know how well it'll work.
Anyway, I realized that apparently I did have it installed already, so I just uninstalled
that one, and re-installed this new one I just got.
When you run the installer, just select to install it to this computer and then take
note of that install path.
And then just go next until you get to the feature section, you can just do all the defaults
or if you want, you can check them all and install everything if you want, and then it'll
just go and install.
After that though, you'll also have to download the separate Windows PE add-on for the ADK.
It's not actually included in that, you have to download a separate thing, I'll put that
link of course, too.
So just run that installer now, select "install for this computer" again, and then go until
it says select features, which there is only one available, the Windows PE thing.
It's about 5.5 GB, and then do the same thing, install it.
And then it's going to go into this directory, the Program Files (x86) > Windows kits > 10
> and then Assessment and Deployment Toolkit.
So now that's installed.
To actually use it, you go into the start menu and do a search for "deployment and imaging
tools environment".
It should come up, and then run that as an admin.
So note that it opens to the same installed directory as a CMD command prompt window,
but this is not the same as just opening CMD and going to that directory.
For some reason, you have to actually make sure that this environment program running
like is shown being in the window title.
So after that window is open, the command we're going to use is copype.
So if you just type that in, it's going to show some info about it and the syntax, and
you can see that in the brackets, some of the parameters you're going to need are the
different CPU architectures.
Most of you will just use amd64, which is just 64 bit processors.
Even if it's Intel, it's still going to be called amd64.
And x86 is for 32 bit processors, which aren't really that common anymore.
And you can check if you want to be sure if you go to about PC and it says x64-based processor,
that's amd64.
The next parameter will be the working directory, which is basically the location it's going
to put the files temporarily.
And that can be wherever.
So all put together, the command I'm going to use is copype and then amd64, and then
the location I'm going to put it is in the top level directory C:\WinPE is all I'm going
to call it.
One thing to understand is this working directory is not where it's actually installing this
USB bootable thing to.
So don't set this location to the USB flash drive.
Think of it like baking a cake, where you get all the ingredients together and put everything
in a pan first, before you put it in the oven.
That's basically what we're doing here.
The working directory is basically the pan where you put all the ingredients in and then
once everything's added, then you can burn it to the actual USB, and that would be where
you're putting it in the oven in our analogy.
So we're just preparing things in this working directory first.
So don't set it to the USB drive, it won't work.
After you run this command, it will simply say success.
And then you can see that the folder is there where I set.
Now at this point, the next step is just going to be running the program to actually take
those files and burn it onto the USB drive in a special way so it'll actually work.
But you could, at this stage, also add stuff into the Windows PE installation.
However, if you do it using the official Windows methods that is on Microsoft's website, it's
actually extremely complicated and you have to basically install certain packages after
mounting .WIM files, I forget what they stand for, and you have to copy packages from one
into the other.
It's kind of a nightmare and they're not actually any really useful packages anyway, for most
people.
So you can read about that on Microsoft's website if you want to be able to do this,
but for this example, we're just going to do the most basic version.
So to actually put this onto the USB drive, make sure you have an empty USB drive that
you don't care about any of the data on it, because this is going to be completely wiped
and formatted.
So make sure that's plugged in, and then we're going to go back into that same ADK window
we were using before.
The command we're going to be using is MakeWinPEMedia.
And again, if we just type it in like that, it's going to show some info about it and
the syntax.
And you can see that it says it creates a bootable Win PE flash drive or ISO, and I'm
paraphrasing there.
You can either do the parameter /UFD or /ISO.
UFD stands for USB Flash Drive.
And in that case, the whole drive is going to be formatted, just used for Windows PE.
And for ISO though, it's going to make an ISO that you can later use to burn onto one
or multiple USB disks or CDs.
Then the two locations we put our first, the working directory, then the destination.
So the thumb drive or the ISO location.
Note the order here, don't mix them up or you could risk formatting the entire wrong
hard drive or something like that.
So first we can do the super basic version, which is just formatting a whole drive, and
then we'll do the ISO, which is actually probably better, and I'll show you why after that.
So for this, we can put in our own parameters as MakeWinPE /ufd C:\WinPE, that's our working
directory, and then my flash drive is in drive M: Double check again, to make sure that the
drive letter is correct, it will say it to confirm it.
And then once you run it, it's just going to copy the files over.
And then you can see once it's done, that the Win PE directory is only about 300 megabytes.
So at this point you could just plug that USB in and it'll boot to Win PE, but let me
show you next, how to do the ISO version and why I think this is actually probably better.
So this time the command will be, MakeWinPEMedia /iso, and then the location of the working
directory.
Again, C:\WinPE and then where I'm going to put the ISO, I'll just put it in there again,
C:\WinPE and call it winpe.iso.
Take note that for the ISO location, you have to write out the whole thing, including the
name you want to call it, and you also have to choose a directory that already exists,
or else you'll get an error.
It's not going to create a new folder if the one you put doesn't exist yet, for example.
But after you run it, you can see it's in there.
It was pretty much instant for me, maybe because I have an SSD, but way faster than making
the USB.
Now, at this point, you could just burn the ISO onto the USB drive with another program,
and then it would basically be like the other one we made directly, but there's actually
a better option I recently found out about called Ventoy.
It's a software that everyone was telling me about in the comments of my USB boot drive
video.
And basically, it allows you to create a multiple bootable USB drive.
So instead of just having to make one USB drive per bootable disk, you can actually
put as many as you want, as will fit on one drive, and you can select that when you're
booting up the computer, which is way awesome.
I'll put the link of that in the description, but once you run Ventoy and use it to set
up a USB drive, it'll create a bunch of partitions.
Some of them you won't be able to see, but for the one that is visible, called Ventoy,
literally all you do is copy and paste ISOs into that USB drive, and then those are the
ones that will be selectable and bootable from the screen when you boot up the computer.
Quick note, however, one reason you might choose not to use Ventoy though, is because
it might not play well with something called Secure Boot, which is basically a security
feature in a lot of computers these days that only boots using certain signed softwares.
Now with the Windows PE standalone disk or most other standalone disks, that's all signed,
so you shouldn't have any problem, really.
But with Ventoy, you might have to either disable secure boot on your BIOS settings,
which isn't too hard, but you might not know how to do it.
Or alternatively, Ventoy does actually support Secure Boot, but you have to go through a
couple of extra steps, for example, enabling it and choosing to enable it when you set
up the USB drive initially, and you're going to have to go through several steps on the
first time you've run it on a particular computer.
All those instructions will be on Ventoy's website, and I was able to follow them and
get it working.
But you might not want to have to deal with that.
You might be scared of looking at some of the complicated stuff, but it's not too hard
if you just follow it.
So it'll still work.
You just have to be aware of that.
Now in any case, no matter how you're going to boot up, whether with Ventoy or just making
a standalone disk, it should be good to go.
You plug it in, you boot into it, and then what you'll see is...
A command prompt window, and that's basically it.
So yes, it is more bare bones than maybe you were even expecting.
However, that doesn't mean that just because it's command line, that is not useful.
In fact, there are several tools that are normally built into Windows that you can now
access from here and could potentially be used to fix your computer.
For example, there's disk part for messing around with disk partitions and stuff.
There's DISM, which can be used to validate the integrity of different system files and
stuff like that.
Same with SFC, that's also a very similar system file checker, same use, and even BCD
edit for changing the boot records and stuff like that.
There are plenty more though.
If you do the command DIR and then the filter *.exe, this will show you all the different
exe that you can run right from this command line.
Now this is going to show all the executables here, so some are just background, not actually
tools, but it will show some utilities too.
So you can see 'chkdsk' in there for example, I forgot to mention that one.
So yeah, this is cool and all, though it is limited.
There's not even really a desktop.
However, you can actually technically access Windows Explorer if you run Notepad.
Yes, that's in here too.
And then if you go to file open, well, there's your Explorer window right there.
You can actually navigate through there, delete stuff, copy stuff, whatever.
It just might not be what you're usually used to, but it might still work.
All right, so that's pretty cool.
But what if you wanted to create, again, your own Windows PE boot drive, but do want to
add certain custom programs and stuff?
Well, the easiest way to probably do that would be using a program called Win10XPE.
This program basically lets you create a customized Win PE boot disk, and it allows you to choose
from a whole bunch of different tools that have been pre-prepared for Windows PE, you
just select which one you want to add.
When you do run it, you'll see it's called WinBuilder, that's because I believe the Win10XPE
is the name of the project and it uses Win Builder.
But anyway, it's the same thing.
Keep in mind though, to get this program actually working and to actually use it, you will have
to disable your antivirus because there are a couple of false positives that might show
up.
Now that being said, everything I've read about it indicates that it's completely safe
and they are indeed false positives.
I have not heard anyone saying that it actually is a secret virus.
It's a pretty popular program and I ran it myself.
So if it still sketches you out, maybe don't run it, but just know that you are going to
have to disable your antivirus to run.
So anyway, first it's going to have you download a specific ISO for a version of Windows, and
it's going to have links to where you can download that.
After you do download and then select the ISO, you then go in and simply choose the
programs you want to add and include or not.
So you can see me going through a whole bunch of these in here, and there's all sorts of
different categories like antivirus, utilities, networking and stuff.
There's some media ones, for example, there's Media Player Classic and VLC Media player
in there that weren't selected by default, so I added those in.
Also it didn't have Firefox selected, only Google Chrome.
So I figured why not add that in.
I pretty much selected everything except for a couple that I knew would be kind of useless,
because I did really intend to use this as a potential future rescue disk for my own
self.
After you select all the programs, there are a ton more customizations.
You can choose the profile picture, the wallpaper, all sorts of themes and stuff.
I'm not going to get into that.
Just know that those options are there if you really want to dig down into it.
But once you have everything selected, you simply click the play button and that's going
to go through and compile and create this boot disk and put it into an ISO that can
then be used and burned onto the drive in a number of ways.
So this could take a while, if you get any breaking error messages or something, it probably
is your antivirus blocking it, but I'll just fast forward anyway.
So anyway, once it's done, you'll see the ISO is in the same folder as the program we
just ran.
So again, you can make this bootable in any number of ways, either using Ventoy or just
using a regular ISO burner to put it on a CD or a USB.
I'm just going to use Ventoy again, maybe I'll rename these to something a little bit
more easier to recognize.
So anyway, once you boot it up, it's going to look a lot more familiar, like the regular
Windows 10 that I'm used to, and you can see it does have all those tools and stuff that
I selected.
It's all either on the desktop or in the start menu and stuff like that.
You got the full Windows Explorer, you can look through the different drives.
Very, very useful, could come in handy.
So obviously Windows PE is very useful, but you don't actually have to go through the
whole hassle of creating your own Windows PE boot drive, whether you're using the official
Microsoft tools or even using this Win10XPE software.
Instead, you could just go online and search for "Windows 10 PE rescue disks", and there
are several projects people have made.
And since they are pre-made, usually they just come as pre-packaged ISOs, so they're
extremely easy to install.
You can either burn it directly or again, run it off Ventoy, so no building or compiling
or anything required.
Like I mentioned, I'd probably get Hiren Boot CD PE is probably the one I'm the most familiar
with.
So that's really the only one I'm going to mention.
I haven't used any other ones, but you might be able to find it.
But in any case, now you know a little bit more about how Windows works and you probably
came out of this with a new rescue disk that you could use the next time disaster strikes
on your computer.
So thanks again to Morning Brew for sponsoring this video.
Again, be sure to click the link in the description and sign up for Morning Brew's daily newsletter,
so you can stay up to date on the latest in tech, business and finance.
If you guys want to keep watching, the next video I recommend is that previous video I
mentioned, where I go over four different bootable USB drives that you should probably
make before it's too late, and they could really come in handy.
So you can just click that right there, and thanks for watching, guys.
I'll see you in the next one.