The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) is a free download from Microsoft that is designed to help IT professionals deploy Windows Vista. The two main parts of the kit are Windows PE, and the Windows System Image Manager. Windows PE is a replacement for those old DOS boot disks, allowing you to boot a machine from CD/DVD and have 32-bit tools at your disposal. Windows System Image Manager allows you to customize Vista images by adding/removing/configuring components using the unattend.xml file. This post will focus on getting WAIK installed on your computer.

The first thing to do is download WAIK. You can get it free from Microsoft through their download page:

Windows Automated Installation Kit

The download is 829.6MB in size, and is in the form of an img file named vista_6000.16386.061101-2205-LRMAIK_EN.img. An img file is basically a disc image file, intended to make creating a physical disc easier. Once you have the file downloaded, there are a few ways to proceed.

One method is to actually burn a DVD from the image. You can do this using most any DVD burning software. Tell the software to open the img file, and it should give you options to burn it to a disc. If you don’t have DVD burning software, there are some free versions available. One that I used is called IMGBurn (available from www.imgburn.com.

Another method you can use doesn’t involve using physical media, and is also free. Daemon Tools, available from www.daemon-tools.cc/
is a free tool that lets you setup a ‘virtual drive’ that can then show the contents of different types of image files. This will allow you to access the img file as if you had a DVD in your drive without having to waste a DVD just to get the files out.

After downloading the application, double-click it and you’ll get a welcome screen. Click Next to continue.

On the License Agreement screen, click I Agree.

In my case (installing from Vista RC2) I was told I’d need to restart my machine. After doing so, I repeated the first steps.

On the Daemon Tools Choose Components screen, I unchecked the Daemon Tools Search Bar and Desktop Shortcut, of course this is entirely up to you.

You’ll be asked to choose a location, typically the default location is fine.

When the install is complete, you can click Finish and Daemon Tools will run automatically.

Once running, Daemon Tools is just a red icon that sits in your taskbar.

Click on it and you’ll see any media you have mounted, or will have the option to Unmount all drives.

To mount our image, click on the bottom line that shows your empty virtual drive. You’ll get a dialog window to Select new image file. IMG files aren’t among the default types that Daemon Tools opens, so you’ll need to go down to the Files of type: drop-down and choose All files (*.*). You can then browse to find the WAIK img file you downloaded, and click Open.

After opening the file, Daemon Tools will mount it, just like putting a CD/DVD into the drive. If you have AutoRun enabled, the WAIK setup may run immediately, or you may be asked if you want to run StartCD.exe. If it doesn’t start automatically, go to the new drive that Daemon Tools created (in my case E:) and double-click StartCD.exe.

The first screen you’ll get is Welcome to Windows Automated Installation Kit. Note that you can only install WAIK on Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, or Windows Vista.

Click on Windows AIK Setup to begin the installation.

The Windows Automated Installation Kit installer window will open, click Next.

Agree to the license and click Next.

In the Select Installation Folder screen, you can accept the default location and click Next.

Finally you’ll get a screen to confirm you are ready to install, click Next and the installation begins.

When finished, you’ll get the Installation Complete screen, and you can then click the Close button.

You should then unmount the Daemon Tools img file by clicking the Daemon Tools taskbar icon and choose Unmount all drives, and finally right-click on the Daemon Tools icon and choose Exit to close the program.

Now that you have WAIK installed, play with it a bit. The first thing I did was create a Windows PE startup disc, which I’ll explain in the next article.