Windows USBBack when I was just a lad (Man! I’m starting to sound like my father!), I remember reading about a trick when installing Windows NT workstation. If you put a floppy disk in the computer during installation, you could skip a number of steps because it would have all of the information on the disk for you. This would (theoretically) speed up your installations.

Fast forward to 2007 and things sure are different. Hardly anyone used floppy disks anymore. Even the trusty CD-ROM ’s days seems to be numbered. All the cool kids are using USB drives these days. But can they help you with your workstation installations?

According to Josh at Windows Connected, it sure can! His article Creating A Bootable WinPE 2.0 USB Key walks you the process of putting the WinPE environment on a USB device. Josh’s article relies heavily on the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) which performs all of the work. According to the Microsoft website:

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) is designed to help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system builders, and corporate IT professionals deploy Windows onto new hardware. The Windows AIK is a set of deployment tools supporting the latest release of Windows. This guide describes the methods, tools, and requirements for deploying Windows.

WinPE is a very powerful tool. Not only can it help you to install systems, but it can also help you to repair these systems after you have put them into production. If you have never worked with the WinPE environment, now would be a good time to look into it.

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Tim Fehlman