install.wim windows 7 explained (Learn the basics in minutes)

I got this thing the other day, right? This * for Windows 7. Let me tell you, it was a bit of a head-scratcher at first, but I got it figured out. I was trying to put Windows 7 on this old machine I had lying around, but I only had this * file, not the whole usual setup thing. So I had to do some digging.

First, I tried to find out what this .wim even is. Turns out, it stands for Windows Imaging Format. It’s like a compressed file that has all the Windows 7 stuff inside it.

So, how do you use it? Well, I learned that there’s this tool called Windows System Image Manager, but that’s part of something called the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit. Sounds fancy, but it’s really just a bunch of tools from Microsoft. I didn’t really want to mess with all that, so I kept looking.

Then, I found out that this * is actually inside those Windows 7 DVDs or ISO files. You know, in the “sources” folder. But I didn’t have one of those, just the .wim file. More searching!

• I learned about something called ImageX, which is a command-line tool. It can “apply” the .wim to a hard drive. I thought, “Okay, I can do command-line stuff.”
• Then there’s this other thing, bcdboot. It sets up the boot stuff so the computer knows how to start Windows after you put it on the hard drive.

So, I got ImageX and bcdboot. I put the * on a USB drive. I booted up the old computer from a different USB drive that had these tools on it. Then, in the command prompt, I used ImageX to apply the * to the computer’s hard drive. It took a while, but it worked!

After that, I used bcdboot to make the hard drive bootable. That was pretty quick. I restarted the computer, took out the USB drives, and guess what? Windows 7 started up! I couldn’t believe it. It was like magic.

I also heard about converting * to *, but I didn’t need to do that since I already had the .wim file. But apparently, they’re basically the same thing. They both have all the Windows stuff in them, just in a slightly different way.

So, yeah, that’s how I installed Windows 7 from an * file. It wasn’t as easy as just clicking “*,” but I learned a lot along the way. Now that old computer has a new lease on life, running Windows 7 like a champ.

Oh, and one more thing I found out later, someone told me .wim is part of the installation media, and deleting it will mess up stuff, so better not delete it. Just uninstall programs if you want to free up space.