You can create a folder, drive, or virtual drive on a USB disk containing the Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 installation folders.

About this task

Important:

The process formats the entire USB drive!

Prerequisites

  • The drive letter U:\ must be available to create the bootable USB disk. The creation scripts do not warn you if it is already in use.

  • When using a .ISO file for Windows installation, extract the content of the .ISO file by one of the following methods:

    • Use .ISO image file software to download and save the .ISO image file to a CD-R or a DVD-R.

    • Virtually mount and access .ISO files as a virtual device.

    • Extract the .ISO files to your hard drive.

Procedure

  1. On your workstation, create the folder C:\BootUSB.
  2. Create two subdirectories in C:\BootUSB. One called Drivers and one called MirageClient.
  3. Extract the VMware Boot USB Scripts from the BootUSB.zip file to the root of the C:\BootUSB folder.

    Do not modify the file structure or add subdirectories.

  4. Open the C:\BootUSB\MirageClient folder and copy the Mirage client installation MSI to this folder.
  5. Find any hardware drivers you need for the new hardware and copy them to the C:\BootUSB\Drivers folder.
  6. Insert the Windows installation DVD to your DVD drive.

    Alternatively, you can mount your Windows ISO file. This speeds up bootable USB key creation.

  7. Insert the USB Key and wait until Plug and Play detection completes.
  8. Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator and run cd C:\BootUSB.
  9. Select the command you want to run and press Enter.

    Boot USB OS

    Command

    Windows 7

    win7usb.cmd

    Windows 8.1

    win8usb.cmd

    A list of the available disks and their disk number is displayed. Look for the disk number of your USB drive, which you can identify by the size value.

  10. Run the complete command with the following syntax:

    • Windows 7: win7usb.cmd [win7 dvd path] [msi path] [server address] [use ssl transport (true/false)] [usb disk number] [Drivers folder (optional)]

    • Windows 8.1: win8usb.cmd [win8 dvd path] [msi path] [server address] [use ssl transport (true/false)] [usb disk number] [Drivers folder (optional)]

    Option

    Description

    win7/win8 dvd path

    The path to the Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 DVD or folder containing the Windows installation files (folder containing the contents of the Windows DVD).

    msi path

    The path of a Mirage client MSI.

    server address

    The IP address for your Mirage server for client devices to connect.

    Use SSL transport

    A flag that indicates whether this client uses SSL. Use true or false.

    Note:

    The Mirage server must already be configured for the SSL for this to be enabled.

    usb disk number

    This is the number of the USB disk to be formatted. A list of connected disk numbers is displayed upon invocation of the batch file that do not have any parameters.

    Drivers folder

    The location where any hardware drivers required on your new device are stored, from which you can add them to the bootable USB key. This parameter is optional.

    The exact string for each endpoint is different.

    Table 1. Example of a Typical Command String

    Operating System

    Command String

    Windows 7

    C:\BootUSB>win7usb.cmd D:\ C:\BootUSB\MirageClient\MirageClient.msi 192.168.11.203 false 2 C:\BootUSB\Drivers

    Windows 8.1

    C:\BootUSB>win8usb.cmd D:\ C:\BootUSB\MirageClient\MirageClient.msi 192.168.11.203 false 2 C:\BootUSB\Drivers

Results

The USB disk is prepared. When the USB key creation is completed, you can customize it in additional ways. For example, you can have it install additional software, or embed hardware drivers.