Vista Tutorial - Access Vista Install DVD Files

Being that 7-zip can open .wim files, can I skip steps 2, 3, & 4 and use 7-zip instead?

That would be nice. Unfortunately, 7-zip lists the file extensions of files it can zip and unzip (pack and unpack) into and out of zip files. 7-zip can't mount the .wim file for use with Windows Explorer to copy, paste, etc.

Sorry. You would think MS would make accessing these files easier; I think they just never thought of end users repairing their OS and only created these tools as an afterthought, mainly for developers.

Bruce

True, but if you know which files you need & where they are located, you could simply find & extract them without bothering with mounting.

Let me know if that works.
Bruce

I went all the way through this without any issue. Got to step 6 and used commit but there is no such command under imagex - just capture and apply which diod not work so my changes were not made? What should I do?

I have a dell xps1530 that vista came installed on and have the vista disk that dell provided with sp1 on - is that the issue? Everything worked though - downloaded files, mounted to vistamount - could see everything on the Vistamount and deleted old files on c: and replaced from vistamount - just could not get it to accept?

I have had great success up to the point of actually copying over the original files on D:\Vistamount\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\settings.ini to C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar.

Stupid access of Vista, which I guess is the root of this problem in the first place. If we could uninstall/reinstall .NET Framework from the Add/Remove Programs List in the first place, we wouldn't be here at all anyway.

I have tried running windows explorer as an administrator and still have no luck. Screen goes dim and asks for admin privileges when I command to replace the file, then tells me a I need permission, from who?!?! Bill Gates?!?!

Is there a way in the command prompt to give myself SYSTEM access to copy/paste the original file to the corrupted file?

TIA

"You now have install.wim mounted in D:\Vistamount and accessible as a file system. You can then access (i.e. copy and paste) the new OS files via standard file system management tools, such as the Command Prompt or Windows Explorer."

Except, of course, that you cannot modify, delete, or rename any of the files in system32 unless you have permission to write the system32 directory itself. My login is an Administrator login, I opened up a command window with "as administrator" as well as Windows Explorer (again, "as administrator"), and while all the rest of the steps up to step 5 worked perfectly, and I was able to copy tcpmon.ini from the install image to my desktop, I can't replace the "corrupt" file in system32 with the good one now on my desktop. When I try to do anything to the existing "corrupt" tcpmon.ini, I get challenged and respond yes to the challenge, then get a refusal because I don't have permissions to write the system32 directory. I'm not too keen on taking ownership or modifying with icacls the system32 directory, since I don't know what effect that will have on system use of all the system files therein. This seems to be a pretty big hole in the strategy, or maybe I'm just missing something really easy?