Creating a customised Windows PE 3.0 image

Microsoft Windows PE 3.0 is a stripped-down version of Windows 7 based on the 7100 kernel. Capable of running Windows-32 applications, Windows PE can be used for deploying, servicing and repairing Windows installations, as well as running other tools, such as Norton Ghost. Windows PE 3.0 is created using the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7, a free application suite available on the Microsoft website. The Windows AIK for Windows 7 must be installed on a machine running Windows Vista or Windows 7.

Writing a guide for this sort of product is a bit odd for me, however I have been working on making a Ghost-based preinstalled environment recently and was asked to create an article as to what I did.

First, we have to install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 (henceforth know as WAIK). WAIK can be downloaded from the Microsoft site here.
Run the Deployment Tools Command Prompt (from the Start Menu) as an administrator.
Now, use copype.cmd to copy the required Windows PE files to our working directory (here c:\winpe).
>copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe
Next, we want to customise our image. In the WAIK for Windows 7, many of the commands present in previous versions of the WAIK have been all rolled into one utility, named dism. To mount the image (stored in the working directory in the Windows Imaging Format, extension .wim), we will use dism /mount-wim.
>dism /mount-wim /wimfile:c:\winpe\winpe.wim /index:1 /mountdir:c:\winpe\mount
A note on dism - by using the /? modifier at any stage, more information can be found about the tool and its options.
Now, the image has been mounted to the c:\winpe\mount directory, and can be modified. All dism commands during the image manipulation phase will refer to the image, by immediately proceeding the dism call with /image: c:\winpe\mount.