Part 1 showed how to create a custom ISO. This is the deep part: which components to remove, which to never touch, how the setup bypasses actually work, and the build order that keeps Windows Update healthy afterwards.
Anyone can tick every remove checkbox in a customisation tool and produce a tiny ISO. The hard part is producing one that still installs cleanly, updates every month, and activates normally six months later. In the video, Technical Anshu loads the image and walks through the component list and the setup options — this guide explains the reasoning behind those choices, the safe order of work, and the checks to run before the ISO goes near a real machine. Work in layers, keep the untouched Microsoft ISO as your fallback, and never delete your only clean source image.
Every custom build in this series starts from the untouched ISO downloaded from Microsoft. That matters for three reasons: the file hashes match what Microsoft published, no third party has pre-modified the servicing store, and if anything goes wrong you can prove the problem came from your changes, not the source.
00-Source — never edit this copyDism /Get-WimInfo /WimFile:D:\sources\install.wimWhether you use the GUI tool from the video or pure DISM, the flow is identical: mount, inspect, change, verify, commit. Mounting with DISM looks like this, and the same commands let you audit what any tool did:
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:D:\sources\install.wim /Index:1 /MountDir:C:\MountDism /Image:C:\Mount /Get-Packages and Dism /Image:C:\Mount /Get-CapabilitiesDism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\Mount /Commit — or discard a bad session with /Discard and start again, which is exactly why you never edit the sourceThe layered order is the whole secret of a stable custom ISO:
An open image is also your chance to add value instead of only removing things. Slipstream the current cumulative update so a fresh install is not two hours behind on patches, and integrate the storage and network drivers your hardware needs so Setup can see the disk and the first boot already has internet. Both jobs are DISM one-liners — /Add-Package for updates and /Add-Driver /Recurse for a driver folder — and they are covered step by step in the offline servicing page of this series.
The bypasses shown in the video — skipping the TPM, Secure Boot and RAM checks, and avoiding the forced Microsoft account — work because they are policy checks inside Windows Setup, and the image itself can carry the answers. Tools write the LabConfig values for the setup environment and set the BypassNRO flag in the image registry, or an answer file issues the same commands during the windowsPE pass. One honesty line that matters: a bypass removes a check, not a hardware requirement — Windows 11 24H2 still needs a CPU with POPCNT and SSE4.2 instructions, and no checkbox can add instructions a processor does not have. Full detail is in the bypass page of this series.
A finished build is a claim, not a fact, until it passes testing:
The complete pre-deployment checklist is in the testing page of this series. Build slowly, test fully, and your custom ISO becomes a tool you can hand to a customer with confidence.
Every checkbox, removal and bypass option from this page is shown live in the full video — watch it end to end before you build your own ISO.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes, for your own PCs — customising installation media you obtained from Microsoft is a long-standing deployment practice, and activation still follows each machine's own licence. What you may not do is redistribute modified ISOs publicly or use one licence on many machines. The licensing page in this series explains the lines in detail.
The video loads the ISO into a GUI customisation tool and works through its component checkboxes and setup options — the same class of tool as NTLite or the MSMG Toolkit. Every technique on this page also works with plain DISM commands, so the method survives even if you change tools.
It will if you respect the red zone: never remove the servicing stack, the component store plumbing or WinRE, and prefer tuning settings over deleting system components. The Windows Update page in this series explains exactly how aggressive removal breaks monthly updates and how to avoid it.