Perform PE stage of Windows Setup via custom .cmd script

[cschneegans]

37887a0 adds the option to provide a .cmd script to handle the PE stage of Windows Setup:

Such a .cmd script will typically need to

• prepare the disk, copy a Windows image to it and make it bootable,
• copy the current answer file to C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml and C:\Windows\Panther\unattend-original.xml so that the unattended setup process will continue after the reboot,
• reboot (via wpeutil.exe reboot) to conclude the PE stage.

This has some notable benefits, mainly because custom code can run after the imaging operation is complete:

• You can remove and disable 8.3 file names without manual interaction.

• Disabling Windows Defender is much easier, compared to the awkward DisableDefender.vbs script.

• You can avoid the creation of a recovery partition in Windows 11 24H2 by deleting the file
  C:\Windows\System32\Recovery\winre.wim.

• You can fine-tune the imaging operation. For example, you can add the /Compact switch to the dism.exe /Apply-Image call.

[cschneegans]

This is how the PE stage would look like running such a script:

[smpltechno]

This feature looks very promising... I am trying to make an ARM script to deploy to Surface Pro X (and eventually later models). I can get the Surface to load a plain Win11 24h2, but it is not a typical install, it does not see the answer file. In fact it basically loads a recovery console, you pick the CMD option and run a script called ApplyImage.bat (attached stripped version), which basically asks a few questions regarding recovery and compactOS, it partitions, and then runs
dism /Apply-Image /ImageFile:%1 /Index:1 /ApplyDir:W:\
and then waits for you to exit to reboot in to the new install. I must inject a driver dir before the reboot:
dism /image:W: /add-driver /driver:D:\drivers /recurse

So I am wondering if you can expand this feature so your site generates a separate stand alone cmd/bat script for the PE environment, that is manually loaded from a cmd prompt,and a separate answer file that will get processed after reboot (without partitioning, etc).

From this guide:
https://joji.me/en-us/blog/how-to-perform-a-clean-windows-11-install-on-surface-pro-x-windows-on-arm/

EDIT: I got this to work really well, removed any PE commands from the XML, and put the PE commands in a separate bat file (
ApplyImgAuto.bat.txt ), and put my Autounattend.xml on the root of the install media. I followed the directions in the above guide to grab the boot.wim from the Surface Recovery image and overwrite the normal Win11 Boot.wim, and extract the drivers for my device. Then I boot the surface holding volume down (after disabling Secure Boot (boot volume up)), it boots from Windows Recovery console on USB, I select Troubleshoot and CMD Prompt, then need to find the USB, it might be D: or another letter depending if the surface currently has a recovery partition, once I change to D: I just run ApplyImgAuto.bat and a few minutes later it reboots and grabs the answer file to continue on auto-pilot.

You can see in my answer file I have put filler lines in anything to do with PE environment or partitioning, that is handled in the bat file.

[cschneegans]

So I am wondering if you can expand this feature so your site generates a separate stand alone cmd/bat script for the PE environment, that is manually loaded from a cmd prompt,and a separate answer file that will get processed after reboot (without partitioning, etc).

I agree that is an interesting use case, and being able to install Windows without relying on setup.exe might be beneficial in its own right. I will investigate possible solutions and keep you posted.

[evilvoice]

Could this be utilized to run winntsetup? I'm not sure the benefit here, but it could allow some manipulation in this space.

[cschneegans]

Could this be utilized to run winntsetup?

Are you referring to this program? I am not familiar with it. But it seems to me that this program is not intended to be run in Windows PE.

[Dezperados]

[cschneegans]

Do you happen to have a method the hide the cmd windows that pop up except the one that's actually needed?

There are several <RunSynchronousCommand> elements that each contain a command like

cmd.exe /c ">>"X:\pe.cmd" (echo … & echo … & echo …)"

to create the pe.cmd script. To avoid a visible window with these commands, one could use wscript.exe instead of cmd.exe, but writing text files with VBScript is quite cumbersome, and VBScript is also deprecated.

[cschneegans]

I have just added the option to generate the PE.cmd script, controlled by several other settings in the form including partition layout, compact mode and image selection:

[smpltechno]

That is fantastic.... I cannot test it for a couple weeks to wait for more Surface devices to come in, but I think the Surface ARM cannot even load Windows Setup, it can only load the recovery console from the install media, so it needs a separate bat file to kick off the script. I see the commands in the xml, I will test boot it like that when I get another device in, but I suspect it won't get that far. Thanks for your quick turn around Christoph.

[evilvoice]

Thanks for the new updates. Is it possible to add back the check from asset.vbs to make sure the diskpart script is using an actual hard drive?

Additionally, how could we exclude certain types of drives? For example, I have an nvme and emmc, I don't want it to install to the emmc.

On something different, would it be possible to customize the network setup in the pe stage? I maintain a few unattends because I have different networks I want to use. It would be nice if it were possible to use different configurations.

I've been meaning to ask about networking for a while, but I think pe stage offers the best platform for this.

[cschneegans]

Is it possible to add back the check from asset.vbs to make sure the diskpart script is using an actual hard drive?

The disk assertion script specified in Run this VBScript code to check disk layout is executed regardless of the PE operation mode. Have you found this not to be the case?

On something different, would it be possible to customize the network setup in the pe stage?

I assume you are referring to WLAN networks? Note that Windows PE does not support WLAN networking at all.

[evilvoice]

I don't see how that can be the case when you build the diskpart script without the vbs in pe.cmd. Maybe I'm missing something, or did it recently change?

[cschneegans]

X:\assert.vbs is created and run independently from X:\pe.cmd – look for

<RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
	<Order>1</Order>
	<Path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"X:\assert.vbs" (echo:…)"</Path>
</RunSynchronousCommand>

in the autounattend.xml file. You are correct that X:\assert.vbs was initially not used in conjunction with X:\pe.cmd, but I changed this behavior recently.

[Nikishek]

In version 25H2 I'm getting error for this line in custom script:
for /f "tokens=3" %%t in ('reg.exe query HKLM\System\Setup /v UnattendFile') do ( if exist %%t set "XML_FILE=%%t" )
ERROR: The system was unable to find the specified registry key or value

[cschneegans]

This is the expected behavior when that registry value does not exist, in which case the script will just look for files named autounattend.xml in the root folders of all available drives.

The line was added to replicate the behavior of setup.exe and in particular to support the Ventoy auto_install plugin.