Overview of Bootable Media

Creating a bootable media (ISO file, USB flash drive or CD/DVD) based on Windows PE (Windows Pre-installation Environment) can load an operating system and run Partition Assistant under the system. It can avoid damage to the native operating system due to some reasons, such as your wrong operation. It is very useful to troubleshoot computer problems and recover data when the native system fails to boot.

Windows PE Bootable media enables you to start a computer for the purposes of deployment and recovery. It boots directly into memory, which lets you remove the Windows PE media after the computer boots. Once you have booted into Windows PE, you can reformat or modify the hard drive and then copy the Windows PE source files to the hard drive.

How to make a WinPE bootable media? With the help of AOMEI Partition Assistant, it becomes very easy.

How to make a bootable WinPE media

Before you do

• Attach a USB flash drive or insert a blank CD/DVD to your computer. If you neither have a USB nor CD/DVD, AOMEI Partition Assistant also enables you to create a bootable WinPE ISO file, which can be used to boot your virtual machines or burn to other devices.
• For Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows 2008, you may need to manually download Windows AIK (Automated Installation Kit), which is a set of tools that could help you configure and deploy operating system to new hardware.
• For Windows 8/8.1/10/11 computers, you may need to manually download Windows ADK (Assessment and Deployment Kit). Starting with Windows 10, version 1809, you also need to download the Windows PE Addon and run the included installer after installing the ADK. This change enables post-RTM updates to tools in the ADK.
• Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant on a Windows computer.

This tool is very useful for you to troubleshoot computer problems, and recover partitions in case of system boot failure. If you would like to use this feature, please upgrade to a paid version of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, Server, or above versions.

How to Make a Bootable WinPE Media with AOMEI Partition Assistant

1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant. Click the "Tools" main tab and select "Make Bootable Media". Confirm the operation and click "Next" to continue.

Tips:

• AOMEI Partition Assistant will automatically detect whether your system has installed Windows AIK/ADK or not. If yes, please go to the next step. If not, please download and install Windows AIK/ADK first.
• If you want to put Windows system on a USB drive to use, you can use the "Windows To Go Creator" under the All Tools Tab.

3. Choose a way to create the WinPE bootable media according to your needs and click "Proceed". Here we take USB Boot Device for example.

There are three ways available to create bootable media based on Windows PE.
Burn to CD/DVD: To create a bootable CD/DVD.
USB Boot Device: To create a bootable USB Device.
Export ISO File: Use this method to make a bootable ISO file. After the ISO is exported, you need to burn it with a third-party burning program. Or, you can use the ISO to boot some virtual machines or burn it to other devices.

Tips: "Add Drivers" allows you to manually add additional and necessary drivers into the bootable media so that more devices will be available after you boot into WinPE.

4. After you select the way and proceed, there will be a pop-up information window. The USB flash drive needs to be formatted and all the data on it will lose. If there is important data on it, please first make a backup. If you confirm, please click "Yes" to continue.

5. The creation operation will start. The progress of creating a WinPE bootable USB drive will take a few minutes. Once it is finished, you can click "Finish".

So far, you have created the bootable media successfully. If your computer does not start or certain operations cannot be performed under Windows, you can use the bootable media to boot the PC into WinPE to do the operations you need.

When do you need to use Windows bootable media?

After we created a bootable, in the following cases, you can use Windows bootable media to solve the problem:

Case 1. If your PC cannot boot due to the damaged Master Boot Record (MBR) issue, you can use it to boot into WinPE to rebuild MBR to fix the corrupted MBR, which helps fix the system boot issue.

Case 2. If a partition is deleted or data is lost, you can also use it to boot into WinPE to recover partition.

Case 3. If you would like to remove or reset your Windows password without booting into Windows, you can boot into WinPE to reset Windows password.

Case 4. If the partition resizing operation cannot be finished normally under Windows, you can use it to boot into WinPE to resize partitions.

Case 5. If the MBR/GPT disk conversion operation cannot be finished normally under Windows, you can use it to boot into WinPE to convert drive.

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Notes:

1. AOMEI Partition Assistant will detect and integrate all necessary drivers of the current system automatically. When the progress begins a few seconds, there will be a pop-up window with the list of these drivers.

2. To boot from the Windows PE USB flash drive or CD/DVD, you need to enter BIOS/UEFI and change boot order under Boot Menu. And, you may also need to disable Secure Boot under BIOS/UEFI. For different brands of computers, the key to enter into BIOS might be different. You can check more details here.

FAQs: Make a Win PE bootable CD/drive

Q 1: What is the main difference between a WinPE bootable media and a portable version?

A: The main difference is that the bootable media is mainly used to boot a PC in case of PC boot failure, while the portable version is mainly convenient for engineers or technicians to do IT maintenance or support on client computers without installation.

Q 2: After you boot into WinPE, some devices cannot be recognized. How to solve it?

A: Maybe it lacks related drivers in the Winpe, you could click the "Add Drivers" button to add corresponding drivers when recreating the WinPE.

Q 3: if the error "Failed to create the bootable ISO file" appears, how can I solve it?

There is an error "Failed to create the bootable ISO file. The WIM file you specified may be invalid or there might be an error during the process of the creation. One possible reason is that your system doesn't have the Recovery Environment or the Recovery Environment has been damaged, please install ADK and WinPE Addon and retry creation. Also, we suggest you reboot the computer and try once again, or read the online FAQ during the creation of the bootable media.