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Hardware independence Windows PE is a hardware-independent Windows environment for both x86 and x64 architectures. You can use the same preinstallation environment on all desktop computers and servers without creating and maintaining different bootable disks for different hardware configurations.
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APIs and scripting capabilities Windows PE contains a subset of the Win32 application programming interfaces (APIs); a command interpreter capable of running batch scripts; and support for adding WSH, HTA, and Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects to create custom tools or scripts. The scripting capabilities in Windows PE far exceed the capabilities of MS-DOS–bootable disks. For example, the command interpreter in Windows PE supports a more robust batch-scripting language than does MS-DOS, allowing you to use more advanced scripts.
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Network access Windows PE uses Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) to provide network access and supports standard network drivers for running Windows 7 Setup and installing images from the network to the computer. You can easily add or remove network drivers from a customized version of Windows PE. In contrast, customizing MS-DOS–bootable disks to access network shares is frustrating, mostly because you need to build and maintain numerous disks. Windows PE alleviates this frustration by supporting the network drivers that Windows 7 supports, and Windows PE is easier to customize with additional network drivers.
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Mass-storage devices Windows PE includes support for all mass-storage devices that Windows 7 supports. As new devices become available, you can easily add or remove drivers into a customized version of Windows PE. Customizing an MS-DOS– bootable disk to access atypical mass-storage devices requires tracking down and installing the 16-bit device drivers. However, Windows PE supports many of these massstorage devices out of the box. And customizing Windows PE to support additional mass-storage devices is easier because it uses standard, readily available Windows device drivers.
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Disk management Windows PE includes native support for creating, deleting, formatting, and managing NTFS partitions. Also, Windows PE provides full, unrestricted access to NTFS file systems. With Windows PE, you don’t have to restart the computer after formatting a disk.
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Support for the PXE protocol If the computer supports PXE, you can start it automatically from a Windows PE image located on a Windows Deployment Services server—and Windows Deployment Services doesn’t install the Windows PE image on the computer’s hard disk. Starting Windows PE from the network makes it a convenient tool to use in all deployment scenarios. Also, you can customize a Windows PE image for recovery and troubleshooting purposes, and adding it to Windows Deployment Services makes it a convenient tool to use in production.
Note You must build a custom Windows PE image from the Windows PE source files, as
described in the section titled “Customizing Windows PE” later in this chapter.
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Chapter 9 Preparing Windows PE