Quick Tip – Use ZoomIt to take a screenshot in WinPE

Earlier today I needed to take a snapshot of the screen while doing a deployment in the WinPE phase. This was on a physical machine, so either I had the option of hooking up a screen capture hardware (Epiphan DVI2USB3), or, simply use the little known screenshot feature in ZoomIt.

Extract the x64 version of ZoomIt

First, since I was using a x64 WinPE, and the Zoomit main program is x86, which x64 WinPE can’t run, I needed to extract the x64 version of ZoomIt from the x86 version (which contains both x86 and x64 version. To do that, simply start ZoomIt on a x64 Windows, and make a copy of the ZoomItx64.exe that is extraced in the same folder.

Take a screenshot using ZoomIt

Now, when you have ZoomIt x64 version, you can simply run it in WinPE x64. If you want to avoid the licensing prompt, you can create the following registry key:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
 
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\ZoomIt]
"EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001

Then to do a screenshot, press Ctrl+2 to activate ZoomIt without zooming. Then press Ctrl+S to save the screen to a location that you specify.

Here is the resulting snapshot from a Dell Latitude E7440

Happy Deployment

/ Johan