what is microsoft download manager and do i need it

So let's do that, right click on Select a Windows Image and choose Select Windows Imageīrowse to the Local directory which contains a copy of your Windows DVD and choose the sources directory within there, select the install.wim file

Now that you have a local copy of the DVD, you can use that as your Windows source (we need to point number 2 above to the install.wim file on the local source).

When you start Windows SIM for the first time however, the above panes will all be blank as in the screenshot belowīefore you can use Windows SIM you are going to need your Windows Vista DVD or your Windows Server 2008 DVD, so locate them and once done copy the contents of one of them to a folder locally. distribution share (may contain $OEM$ Folders, Out-of-Box Drivers or the Packages directories, requires at least one of these dirs to be recognised as a DS) If you want to use Windows SIM to customise Windows 7 deployments then you'll need The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 which you can download here.Īs you can see from the screenshot above, there are 5 main areas to Windows SIM, and they are as follows:ġ. Note: this guide is aimed at customising Windows Vista. Windows SIM is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) so if you want it then you'll need to install the WAIK first. If you create an unattend.xml file using Windows System Image Manager (SIM) and you want to allow users to install Windows Vista with no user interaction, you would need to rename the file to autounattend.xml and copy it to the root of a USB Flash Drive. When Windows setup starts it will query these locations if present for the file and if it finds the file it will use the settings found within. You can use Windows SIM to create an answer file (autounattend.xml or unattend.xml) that partitions and formats a disk before installing Windows, you can create an XML file for an unattended install of Vista/Server 2008, and then automate the process by copying the finished AutoUnattend.xml file to either the root of a USB key or the root of a Windows Vista (or Server 2008) DVD.

These XML files are sets of instructions telling Windows Setup how to proceed and install itself, in the past we would have edited such files (sysprep.inf, unattend.txt) using notepad, but now Windows has grown up and so has its' tools. Windows System Image Manager is a tool for editing XML files used in the deployment of Vista/Windows Server 2008.

What is microsoft download manager and do i need it