Windows System Image Manager

The Windows System Image Manager helps administrators manage images and create answer files for unattended installations.

The Distribution Share pane (top left) allows administrators to create and manage locations for installation files, which are typically placed on shared folders on a network server. These Distribution Shares store drivers supplied by OEMs, third-party (“Out-of-Box”) device drivers for hardware or applications, and updates (“Packages” in the illustration) for an image (such as a service pack or security update).

The Windows Image pane displays all the components or features that make up Windows and any packages, such as updates being added to Windows. (Because Windows Vista is more modular than its predecessors, it’s now possible to view an image as the collection of all the components or modules that define Vista’s features.) Each component in the image typically has information that needs to be supplied in the answer file for unattended setup.

The Answer File pane shows the multiple phases of setup, such as windowsPE, which starts the setup process, and oobeSystem, which ends setup by creating the “out-of-Box” experience, as well as the configuration information that must be supplied during each phase. For example, the configuration of the disk and the user data is set in the first or windowsPE stage.