Image Windows 10 laptops with DISM (or other free tool)

xy677 said:

I have to say, BIG thank you for all your help, time and effort! You've been amazing and so helpful. I have your videos bookmarked and they are excellent. I've watched them a few times which helped me immensely!

It's a two way street. In fact, this thread is for me what Ten Forums is at its best: in trying to get this resolved with you has taught a lot to me. I have been too keen to keep my old habits, boot to PE, make partitions with DISKPART script and applying images from a share. It is interesting to work together for a common goal, I am learning more and more the further we go.

Seriously, thank you for an interesting thread :)

Kari

Everything works in my tests, too, both on MBR and GPT disks. The key was and is two different answer files, sysprep with normal unattend.xml and then add autounattend.xml to root of ISO to take care of unattended partitioning and installation.

It's kind of funny that I didn't even think of it although we went close already in page #2, talking about the difference between these two answer files, that for WindowsPE pass you need to use autounattend.xml:

Kari said:

xy677 said:

The one thing that confused me is, when do you use unattend.xml and when do you use autounattend.xml?

This from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...(v=ws.10).aspx (article written for WIndows 7 deployment but applies to Windows 10, too):

As a rule, only answer files named Unattend.xml are used. However, because some answer files include destructive actions such as disk partitioning, you must rename your Unattend.xml file to Autounattend.xml in the windowsPE and offlineServicing configuration passes. These passes run when you first run Windows PE or Setup.exe. You typically use the Autounattend.xml file when you use the Windows Setup DVD boot method and supply an answer file on a USB flash drive (UFD) or floppy disk.

I have to say I don't know about that.

As I mentioned I don't use ISO method to deploy, even on my home network I apply images with DISM. This makes updating image relatively easy and fast; I create a standard Hyper-V checkpoint on my technician VM just before sysprepping and occasionally just apply the checkpoint, run Windows Update and update installed software like browsers and Office, then remove all installers and run Disk Clean-up to remove temp files, sysprep again and capture new install.wim to replace my old one.

Although Windows Update works in Audit Mode, build and feature upgrades do not work. When I want to upgrade my image I sysprep it once with /generalize, /oobe and /reboot switches, create a dummy local admin account in OOBE, sign in to desktop to upgrade for instance with latest Insider build, when done run sysprep with /audit and /reboot switches to boot back to Audit Mode, remove the dummy user and its profile folder, remove all installers and run Disk Clean-up to remove temp files, sysprep again and capture new install.wim to replace my old one.

Kari

Try Security Policies (WIN + R > secpol.msc) instead of Group Policies, check all three items under Network List Manager Policies, most important item being All Networks:

To simply turn of Network Location Wizard it should be enough to add key NewNetworkWindowOff in registry HKLM > System > CurrentControlSet > Control > Network

Kari