Capturing a Windows System Using WIM

May 28 — Written By Donovan Adkisson

If you’ve ever needed to capture your Windows system (7/8/10/11) for backup or to replicate to other systems, this how‑to is for you. I needed to move from a BIOS/Legacy system to a UEFI system and a larger disk. Using wimlib‑imagex and a small script, we captured an image and re‑deployed it seamlessly.

One benefit of the method is that the installer doesn’t care if the original was BIOS and the target UEFI, or if the new drive is larger. It just works.

You can download the zipped folder of the tools referenced in the original post.

Quick start

1. Insert or mount a Windows 10/11 ISO (note the drive letter, e.g. D:\).
2. Attach the source disk or mount the VHD/VHDX (Windows partition letter, e.g. E:\).
3. Connect a destination drive (e.g. F:\).
4. Run capture.bat D:\ E:\ F:\captures to build an installable image.
5. The full explanation of how to boot from an install thumbdrive, and navigate to the appropriate setup.exe that will give you access to your installation image is in the README.txt file