Using DISM to fix a broken Windows 7 image

The best way to create your gold image is by running a build and capture in a virtual machine. The reason for this is that you don't get extra drivers hanging about in your image.

One of our team accidentally created a fresh image on real hardware. This image worked fine on most models, but failed on a Toshiba Tecra A11. After a long investigation it turned out that the image contained an old Intel network driver that would not work on the Tecra. Even though we had the new driver in our driver store, the Tecra would always choose the driver in the image. Not having a working network driver during OSD is a bit of a problem!

The solution is to use DISM to remove the drivers from the image*.

First of all, make a copy of your image and work on this copy. Once you've done this you need to mount the image. From an administrative command prompt run the following commands-

mkdir C:\mountfolder

dism /mount-wim /wimfile:yourwimfile.wim /index:1 /mountdir:C:\mountfolder 

Once the image has been mounted, run the following

dism /image:C:\mountfolder /get-drivers 

This should show you all the extra drivers that have been added to your image. The drivers will be listed as oem1.inf, oem2.inf and so on. Here's the sample output from an image I recently had to edit-

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool

Version: 6.1.7600.16385

Image Version: 6.1.7600.16385

Obtaining list of 3rd party drivers from the driver store...

Driver packages listing:

Published Name : oem0.inf
Original File Name : prnms001.inf
Inbox : No
Class Name : Printer
Provider Name : Microsoft
Date : 21/06/2006
Version : 6.1.7600.16385

Published Name : oem1.inf
Original File Name : prnms001.inf
Inbox : No
Class Name : Printer
Provider Name : Microsoft
Date : 21/06/2006
Version : 6.1.7601.17514

Published Name : oem2.inf
Original File Name : sthda.inf
Inbox : No
Class Name : MEDIA
Provider Name : SigmaTel
Date : 09/08/2005
Version : 5.10.4647.0

Published Name : oem3.inf
Original File Name : sthda64.inf
Inbox : No
Class Name : MEDIA
Provider Name : SigmaTel
Date : 09/08/2005
Version : 5.10.4647.0

Published Name : oem4.inf
Original File Name : b57nd60a.inf
Inbox : No
Class Name : Net
Provider Name : Broadcom
Date : 02/12/2010
Version : 14.4.2.2

Published Name : oem5.inf
Original File Name : k57nd60a.inf
Inbox : No
Class Name : Net
Provider Name : Broadcom
Date : 02/12/2010
Version : 14.4.2.2

The operation completed successfully.

To remove, for example, the Broadcom k57nd60a.inf driver, just run the command

dism /image:C:\mountfolder /remove-driver /driver:oem5.inf 

You should see dism reporting success

Found 1 driver package(s) to remove.
Removing 1 of 1 - oem5.inf: The driver package was successfully removed.
The operation completed successfully.

Once you've removed the drivers you want, unmount the image and commit the changes

dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:C:\mountfolder /commit

And that should be that. Create a new OS install package and test your image. Once you're happy you can use that image instead of the original.

*Of course, the real solution is to recreate the image in a VM, but that's not always practical!