Error Message: Windows cannot access the required file d:\sources\install.wim when replacing install.wim with custom install.wim

My name is Scott McArthur, a Senior Support Escalation Engineer who focuses on deployment issues. My topic for today’s blog entry involves an issue where a customer was deploying Windows Server 2008 by replacing the default install.wim on the Windows Server 2008 media with a custom install.wim. 

When booting up the DVD they encountered the following error

The x:\windows\panther\setuperr.log contained the following:

When you deploy a custom install.wim with Image Based Setup (IBS) it must know the edition of the image. 

You can verify this by running the imagex /info command with the install.wim.  For example

The image metadata must contain an entry similar to this.  If you do not see the following metadata entry then you know it was not captured by using /flags

When capturing the image you must use the following syntax

Where EditionID is:

HomeBasic, HomePremium, Starter, Ultimate, Business, Enterprise, ServerDatacenter, ServerEnterprise,

ServerStandard

To fix this without re-capturing the image do the following on computer that has the WAIK installed

1.  Click Start, All Programs, Microsoft Windows AIK, and select “Windows PE Tools Command Prompt”

2.  Copy whole contents of DVD to c:\flat

3.  Run the following command to add the EditionID to the metadata

4.  Run the following command to recapture the ISO

Note if you use Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to create and capture your images it automatically adds the /flags switch.  Microsoft Deployment Toolkit is the preferred tool to use for deploying Windows. 

Additional information on the /flags switch can be found in the Windows AIK help files.  Specifically the WAIK.CHM in the imagex command line options.

Scott McArthur
Senior Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft Enterprise Platforms Support