3. User guide
Here you will find a detailed explanation for every step of the setup process. You can follow it while you run WMI to get more info on the step you're currently on.
Once you're done following the steps shown by Get it rolling # Run WMI
you will likely see a screen like this:
If you're seeing the Press any key to begin... message, it means that everything went through well. If you're seeing another screen, you may want to visit the Appendix # Troubleshooting section of the wiki.
You can press Enter to start WMI.
You'll get presented with another screen, which will show some technical information:
You can press Enter again to get to the next step.
You'll see a blue screen, with every upcoming, done and current step.
At the bottom left-hand side you'll see a Loading... text. Let it load, it may take a few seconds.
You'll maybe stumble across this screen:
It means that the C letter (the default Windows installation letter) is taken by another drive.
You can jump to the Appendix # Troubleshooting section of the wiki to figure out how you can fix the error. It's just about selecting another letter, if you press Enter you'll get a detailed explanation of the problem.
If everything goes as planned, you'll eventually end up on this screen right here, which will allow you to select the target disk you'll install Windows on:
Please make sure you're not selecting the USB drive WMI is on nor the Windows installation USB (the one you've booted off of) as it will later result in an error which will trigger WMI Rollback.
Once you've made your choice, press Space to confirm it.
If you instead want to exit from WMI, just press esc.
You then need to run WMI another time to let WMI Rollback revert all the changes made to your disk.
After you've chosen your target disk, you need to wait for it to format.
Then, you'll get to the below screen:
It's time to choose the Windows edition you want to install.
Once you press Enter, a Notepad window will be opened.
It'll contain every Windows edition available for installation that was bundled with your ISO file.
Read the INDEX value corresponding to the Windows edition you want to install, then close the Notepad window and type it at the prompt.
You'll eventually get to the below screen:
The Windows image is being extracted onto your disk.
Let it cook, it may take from 5 to 40 minutes (depending on the speed of your disk).
Wait for it to get to 100%.
The next steps are automatic, so you don't have to worry about them.
Once you get to the below screen, you know Stage 0 completed successfully:
Remove the Windows installation USB, the USB drive WMI is on, then press Enter and wait for your PC to reboot.
If necessary, select your destination disk as the boot source, in order to allow Windows to load from that disk.
Once your PC has rebooted to Windows, you'll see the same welcome screen you saw at the beginning of Stage 0.
After you press Enter, WinDeploy will start. It will properly set up drivers and services.
It can take from 5 to 15 minutes to get its job done.
After WinDeploy is done executing, you are presented with the opportunity to create a user account.
You can enter a username, and you can also choose whether to use a password or not:
Important
Please avoid entering special characters such as "<,>,\,|,/,@,[,],*" or really any character that would be interpreted as an operand by the CMD.
It will result in this error.
You can use them in your password if you want, though.
Similarly to Stage 0, you'll eventually get to the screen that marks the end of the setup process:
Press Enter to reboot your PC.
After your PC has been rebooted, you'll get to the login screen.
Log in with your user and password, then wait until you get to the desktop.
Note
If your login screen looks like this:
it means that something went wrong during the user account creation process.
You can check this section of the wiki to fix the issue.
Anyways, if you manage to get to the desktop it means that the setup process completed successfully.
WMI Post-Install Utility will start up.
It is a small Batch script that allows you to perform basic post-install actions like creating new users, downloading Google Chrome, activating Windows using MAS and more.
Once you're sure you're done using the WPU, you need to choose option 4.
It will delete every file that was used by WMI, including the wmi.exe executable, that is no longer needed and can then be deleted.
After you chose option 4, you need to press U to confirm your choice.
You'll then have to wait a bit to allow the WPU to completely delete every piece of WMI left on your system.
Once it's done, you can close it.
You have successfully installed Windows using WMI!