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replace or update factory.wim
Several months ago I bought a Dell Inspiron 537 with Vista Home Premium x64. When Windows 7 came out I upgraded to it. I did a clean install but kept the OEM and Recovery partitions (they are the same as when shipped).
I had to once restore the pc using the F8 option (still using Vista). I found this to be extremely helpful rather than having to format the drive and reinstall eveything. I feel the
convenience is worth the partition space.
What I want to do is to replace the current factory.wim (Vista) that Dell installed on the pc with the current state of the pc (Windows 7 and all the app I have installed so far).
My question is how do I do this. Can I simply delete or move the old factory.wim (Vista) or do I need to unmount it and then run imagex to create a new factory.wim (Windows 7). If so, will F8 still work and what is the proper imagex settings or command line options that I would need.
Thanks to all in advance for your help
mombodog
12.7K Posts
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January 7th, 2010 11:00
This was pulled from the Dell forums, cannot find the original post, not sure how well this will work when updating a Vista Image to W7, let me know if it works for you.
If you have a recovery partition you can update it to the current state.
Before you begin it would be a good idea to backup the original image at D:\dell\Image\Factory.wim.
Where D is the recovery partition. Its a few GBs usually 3-4.
Procedure:
1. Restore your system and fully update including removing anything unwanted (programs) from the system.
2. Reboot pressing F8 as if you were to go into safe mode.
3. Choose to repair your computer.
4. Open the Command Prompt and type:
cd\tools (Enter)
imagex /APPEND C: X:\dell\Image\Factory.wim "OS" (Enter)
The recovery system mounts the recovery partition as X which is usually D. Append will update the existing image of the C drive where the image is stored a X:\dell\Image\Factory.wim. "OS" is not required but it names the partition like it is in Windows in the original system configuration.
SpyrosM
3 Posts
1
June 28th, 2016 05:00
In my Optiplex 3020 I have three factory,wim files (factory.wim (4GB), factory2.wim(4GB), factory3.wim(1GB) created the same date and before ownership of the computer). I cannot install windows 10 as it cannot update reserved partition.