I’ve always been a big fan of Acronis products but had less and less requirement to use them over the last few years. Recently, I came to the idea of using ghost like technology (Acronis True Image) to quickly roll back Windows 10 image when testing hardware compatibility on inplace upgrade scenario. Integration with MDT and Acronis quickly became a natural step forward so here it is!!!
Integration
On a computer where you’ve already installed the latest ADK and MDT, Install Acronis True Image, then install Disk Director (For this guide, I’m using True Image 2019 and Disk Director 12).
Once done, Turn off Acronis Active Protection in True Image: Navigate to Active Protection button on the side bar and uncheck “Active Protection is on”. After creating the media, you can turn it back on.
Go to this page and download the tool called Custom WinPE-based Media Builder.
Unpack the archive and Launch MVP_ATIPEBuilder.exe, Then select option 1: Build from Installed ADK
Go thru the various options and select whatever you need as the wizard is straight forward without any harmful options. The Author really did a hell of a great job as the tool is backed with a bunch of crazy additional tools like Notepad++, Explorer++, a resolution changer, a task bar, Opera Brower and Sumatra PDF reader to name a few.
Skip creation on USB and DVD and let the tool finish his job integration. The final WIM is in the folder from where you launched MVP_ATIPEBuilder.exe in the ISO\Wim subdir.
From now on, the image is fully functional, if you want to know how it looks like, here it is:
Yes, it’s quiet fun and can be used as is, but as I stated in the title, the goal is to integrate the Acronis tools into my MDT boot image, so the next few steps will cover the MDT integration part:
Grab the wim file called Acronis_MVP_PEMedia_amd64.wim in the .\ISO\wim folder and rename it to winpe.wim.
On the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\en-us rename the existing winpe.wim to winpe.old, then copy winpe.wim from .\ISO\wim folder to C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\en-us.
To make everything a little more integrated, i’ve edited a custom version of the MDT wizard to add the Acronis suite to the start page.
The edited version can be downloaded here.
The following files:
- BDD_Welcome_ENU.xml
- WelcomeWizMini_Choice.xml
- WelcomeWizMini_Choice.vbs
- obtnout.png
- obtnover.png
- obtnsel.png
should be copied to the scripts folder of your deployment share.
The file LiteTouchPE.xml should replace the original one in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit\Templates folder.
When all files are in place, open MDT and right click on your deployment share to pick the option Update deployment share. On The option page select Completely regenerate the boot images
During the creation process, you can check that the WinPE image selected by MDT is the one you’ve just replaced:
Note: MDT may pick the WinPE image from a different location, if this is the case for you, the easiest thing to do is to copy and rename the Acronis boot image to the location described in the log.
Once finished, a WIM and an ISO file are available in the boot folder of the deployment share.
Now let’s see how how it looks:
Quite nice isn’t it? Ok i think the goal is reached for today. There are few additional bonuses included like an embedded resolution changer and an option for a full Windows shell if you add WinXShell to X:\Program Files\WinXShell.
For this latest feature, you need to add those files in your WinPE image using the MDT option “Extra Directory to add”. That’s all you need to know to get the tool installed.
The final result looks like this, and is a quite nice developer environment under Windows PE:
Enjoy your WinPE.