Wonko, out of your 7,173 posts, how many do you think you belittle people? Your sarcastic aura of superiority is one of the most annoying things on the whole internet for me. I'm 99% sure you are not married.
For the OP, i do the same approach with XP, how we capture the wim. You can even have multiple indexes saving alot of space, and it copies much faster than the individual files of the i386 directory. How i deploy it is to boot to a Winbuilder PE, format the target drive, set it active, deploy it with imagex, and then run the bootsect /nt52 command to get it to boot.
If you understand autoit, i just use a simple gui like this...
#Region ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
#AutoIt3Wrapper_Icon=XPXP.ico
#AutoIt3Wrapper_Compression=4
#AutoIt3Wrapper_UseX64=n
#AutoIt3Wrapper_Res_requestedExecutionLevel=asInvoker
#AutoIt3Wrapper_Add_Constants=n
#EndRegion ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
#include <ButtonConstants.au3>
#include <GUIConstantsEx.au3>
#include <StaticConstants.au3>
#include <WindowsConstants.au3>
FileInstall("XPMBR_bootsect_XP.cmd", @WindowsDir & "system32", 0)
#region ### START Koda GUI section ### Form=xp wim.kxf
$Form4_2 = GUICreate("XP Wim Installer", 324, 117, 192, 124)
$Button1 = GUICtrlCreateButton("Capture Wim", 16, 16, 115, 57)
$Button2 = GUICtrlCreateButton("Deploy Wim", 192, 16, 115, 57)
$Label1 = GUICtrlCreateLabel(" OR?", 144, 48, 36, 17)
$Button3 = GUICtrlCreateButton("NT Wim Installer", 32, 80, 115, 25)
$Button4 = GUICtrlCreateButton("Gimagex", 176, 80, 115, 25)
GUISetState(@SW_SHOW)
#endregion ### END Koda GUI section ###
While 1
$nMsg = GUIGetMsg()
Switch $nMsg
Case $GUI_EVENT_CLOSE
Exit
Case $Button1 ;Capture Wim (Advanced)
$TargetAA = FileSelectFolder("Select HDD Sorce drive for WIM", "")
;imagex /compress max /capture %_Target%: "%_Target%:XP.wim" "XP Sp3 x86 (Unattended) (Sept 2011)"
RunWait(@WindowsDir & "system32IMAGEX.EXE /compress max /capture " & $TargetAA & " " & $TargetAA & 'XP.wim "XP Sp3 x86"')
Case $Button2 ;Deploy XP Wim (Advanced)
$WIM = FileOpenDialog("Chooe the XP WIM file", @ScriptDir, "wim (*.wim)", 2)
$TargetBB = FileSelectFolder("Select XP HDD Target drive", "")
RunWait(@WindowsDir & "system32IMAGEX.EXE /apply " & $WIM & " 1 " & $TargetBB)
;RunWait(@WindowsDir & "system32MBR_bootsect_XP.cmd")
;$Targetnt52 = FileSelectFolder("Select XP drive", "")
$szFile = "x:windowssystem32MBR_bootsect_XP.cmd"
$szText = FileRead($szFile, FileGetSize($szFile))
$szText = StringReplace($szText, "DRIVE", $TargetBB)
FileDelete($szFile)
FileWrite($szFile, $szText)
$szFile = "x:windowssystem32MBR_bootsect_XP.cmd"
$szText = FileRead($szFile, FileGetSize($szFile))
$szText = StringReplace($szText, "::", ":")
FileDelete($szFile)
FileWrite($szFile, $szText)
RunWait(@ComSpec & " /k" & ' ' & "x:windowssystem32MBR_bootsect_XP.cmd", "")
Case $Button3
Run(@TempDir & "WinNTSetup2.exe")
Case $Button4
Run(@WindowsDir & "system32gimagex.exe")
EndSwitch
WEnd
and the MBR_bootsect_XP.cmd...
%~dp0bootsect /nt52 DRIVE: /force /mbr