Create a capture boot image in Windows Deployment Services WDS

Creating a Capture Boot Image in Windows Deployment Services (WDS)

A capture image in Windows Deployment Services is what turns a reference machine’s C: drive into a deployable Windows image — it’s the boot media you use on the reference computer to actually capture the operating system and settings you’ve built, so you can push that exact image out to other machines. To create one:

1. Open the Windows Deployment Services console on your WDS server.
2. Right-click your existing boot image (matching the architecture of your reference machine) and choose Create Capture Image.
3. Give it a name and description, and save it to a working location on disk.
4. Add the newly created capture image back into WDS under Boot Images.

To use it, PXE-boot your prepared (sysprepped) reference machine, select the capture boot image from the WDS menu, and the Windows Deployment Services Capture Utility will walk you through capturing the image and uploading it to your WDS image store as an install image, ready to deploy to other machines.

Important Changes to WDS Deployment Workflows (Updated for 2026)

The capture-image mechanism described above is a fairly self-contained WinPE-based process and still works, but the broader WDS landscape it sits inside has shifted significantly since this post was written, and it’s worth knowing before you build new deployment infrastructure around it in 2026:

• WDS itself is deprecated. Since Windows Server 2022, Setup shows a deprecation warning for the WDS role, and WDS can no longer deploy Windows 11 directly from a boot.wim taken straight off a Windows ISO. It remains present and technically functional in Server 2022/2025, but Microsoft is not investing further in it.
• MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit) has been retired outright (announced around January 2026) — no further updates, fixes, or security patches. If your capture/deploy workflow leans on MDT’s Lite Touch or Zero Touch deployment shares alongside WDS, that toolkit is no longer supported and its download packages may disappear from official channels over time.
• A security fix (KB5073379, addressing CVE-2026-0386) blocks WDS’s automated “hands-free” deployment by default from April 2026 — the flaw allowed an attacker on an adjacent network to intercept unattend.xml answer files, which can contain domain credentials, during automated OS installs. PXE boot and WinPE-based/custom workflows (including the capture process above) still function, but the classic automated boot.wim-from-ISO deploy path is now blocked by default and needs explicit re-enabling if you rely on it, with the security trade-off that implies.

Microsoft’s current recommended paths for new deployment work are Windows Autopilot (cloud-first, Intune-driven, the natural fit for most modern fleets) or Configuration Manager OS Deployment for on-prem/hybrid environments — both remain fully supported and actively developed, unlike WDS+MDT.