Deploying images

Wipe, image, drivers, identity — a machine that boots up finished.

Destructive by design — deploy erases the target disk. It only runs inside WinPE (never on a running Windows), shows a red confirmation naming the exact disk, and proceeds only when the technician types ERASE.

Target machine readiness

Target disk is safe to erase Firmware is set to UEFI boot Network works in diagnostics Correct image selected from the Forge library Deployment profile selected, or intentionally skipped Needed driver packs are uploaded and model-scoped

DEPLOY

image disk apply

front-office-win11erase confirmed

Downloadresume supported, hash verified

DriversLatitude 74* pack matched

ProfileACCT-007, first-boot script staged

Deploy verifies the WIM before apply, then injects drivers and profile settings before first boot.

The flow

Boot the target from the ImageForge USB, choose deploy, pick an image from the library (searchable, grouped by category).
Pick a deployment profile — or none for an unchanged image.
Confirm the target disk, type ERASE.
The client partitions UEFI/GPT, downloads the image with live rate/ETA, and verifies its SHA-256 against the catalog before applying — a corrupted or tampered download never reaches a disk.
DISM applies the image; matching driver packs inject; the profile applies (name, domain join, first-boot script); boot files are written.
Remove the USB and reboot into Windows.

Resilience details worth knowing

Interrupted downloads resume from where they stopped — a network blip in a multi-GB transfer costs seconds, not the transfer.
Quiet phases are narrated: DISM scans and integrity checks print heartbeat lines, and hashing shows elapsed time — a silent screen is never "maybe it crashed".
Driver injection failures are deliberately non-fatal: the OS still boots, just without that pack.
Every deploy is recorded in the audit trail with technician, machine serial, model, image, profile, duration, and result.

Requirements and limits

Targets boot UEFI; disks are partitioned GPT. Legacy BIOS/MBR targets aren't supported.
The image is staged on the target volume itself during apply — no second disk needed — so the target disk must be larger than the image's expanded size.
Deploy time is dominated by image size: a lean 10 GB golden image deploys in minutes; a 76 GB fat image can take the better part of an hour end to end.