I am trying to get a working Vista build in a systemroot other than c:\windows. I expect this isn't a supported configuration today, but my network and administrative tools have been built around using a different %systemroot% parameter in all previous windows versions, among other reasons.
I realize that the best way to do this would be with the WAIK and BDD XImage tools, before installing. But I have run into trouble there so I thought that since I have a copy of the systemroot folder in the place I want it already, I might be able to get a working WIM by simply search and replacing the systemroot references in the protected registry locations.
I am happy to access the registry from PE or another partition install, but I can't change them all by hand.