Autounattend with no product key?

QuantumX · 13 Aug 2022

hsehestedt said:

@QuantumX - I have an HP laptop that originally came with Windows 10 Home. As I noted before, I pretty much instantly upgraded it to Pro. But, in light of the information that you provided, I thought that I would just try installation of Win 10 from scratch now. So I performed the installation twice.

The first time I did it your way (no license key specified and the metadata present in the answer file). This installed flawlessly, activating when I gave the system access to the Internet.

On my second installation I flipped the scenario. I had the generic key in the answer file but no metadata entries. That worked the same way with Windows successfully activating after Internet access was provided.

Bottom line is that both methods work equally well for me. But at least now I have learned that if I use the metadata entries I can omit the generic key if I so choose.

That is very interesting, both methods worked correctly. Good to know this.

This makes me think that the activation issues I had in the past was because I used a KMS key (to select edition) for installation which would then conflict with the firmware key, since the firmware key is RTM, and therefore wouldn't activate automatically. At that point I wasn't aware that there are generic keys for RTM versions also.

- - - Updated - - -

thestraycat said:

@QuantumX - Thanks for posting the code snippet. If you could post the whole autounattend.xml with any confidential info removed obviously (although i dont think ANY of it is as you've removed the key? But if need be just make a note to what was removed if need be?) that would be super useful.

The reason is, i use an auto answer file generator (Windows Answer File Generator) which works great, however the XML that is generated dosn't 100% match up with the XML created by whatever toolset you are using to create yours... I've tried 8 different variations now of similar code excerts like yours by editting my XML file and trying to best-fit the excert into it... the issue being every test attempt takes 30 minutes to fail at the 'specialize' stage and bomb out. lol.

On a side note, are the 3 methods you mentioned (/IMAGE/INDEX, /IMAGE/NAME and /IMAGE/DESCRIPTION) simply variables that you dont actually write literally into the XML file like this: /IMAGE/NAME but instead write something like this: /IMAGE/Windows11Pro (or similar?) It would be great to see an example of how this is written in the autounattend.XML file.

Anything you can share or link to would be amazing and a real time saver.

Here is my full file

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
    <settings pass="windowsPE">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <SetupUILanguage>
                <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
            </SetupUILanguage>
            <InputLocale>1c09:00000409</InputLocale>
            <SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
            <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
            <UILanguageFallback>en-US</UILanguageFallback>
            <UserLocale>en-ZA</UserLocale>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <DiskConfiguration>
                <Disk wcm:action="add">
                    <CreatePartitions>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>1</Order>
                            <Size>1024</Size>
                            <Type>Primary</Type>
                        </CreatePartition>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>2</Order>
                            <Extend>false</Extend>
                            <Type>EFI</Type>
                            <Size>100</Size>
                        </CreatePartition>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>3</Order>
                            <Size>128</Size>
                            <Type>MSR</Type>
                        </CreatePartition>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Extend>true</Extend>
                            <Order>4</Order>
                            <Type>Primary</Type>
                        </CreatePartition>
                    </CreatePartitions>
                    <ModifyPartitions>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Format>NTFS</Format>
                            <Label>WINRE</Label>
                            <Order>1</Order>
                            <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
                            <TypeID>DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC</TypeID>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Format>FAT32</Format>
                            <Label>System</Label>
                            <Order>2</Order>
                            <PartitionID>2</PartitionID>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>3</Order>
                            <PartitionID>3</PartitionID>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Format>NTFS</Format>
                            <Label>Windows</Label>
                            <Letter>C</Letter>
                            <Order>4</Order>
                            <PartitionID>4</PartitionID>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                    </ModifyPartitions>
                    <DiskID>0</DiskID>
                    <WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk>
                </Disk>
            </DiskConfiguration>
            <ImageInstall>
                <OSImage>
                    <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI>
                    <InstallTo>
                        <DiskID>0</DiskID>
                        <PartitionID>4</PartitionID>
                    </InstallTo>
                    <InstallFrom>
                        <MetaData wcm:action="add">
                            <Key>/Image/Index</Key>
                            <Value>6</Value>
                        </MetaData>
                    </InstallFrom>
                </OSImage>
            </ImageInstall>
            <UserData>
                <ProductKey>
                    <Key></Key>
                </ProductKey>
                <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
            </UserData>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="offlineServicing">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-LUA-Settings" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <EnableLUA>false</EnableLUA>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="generalize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <SkipRearm>1</SkipRearm>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="specialize">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <InputLocale>1c09:00000409</InputLocale>
            <SystemLocale>en-ZA</SystemLocale>
            <UILanguage>en-ZA</UILanguage>
            <UILanguageFallback>en-ZA</UILanguageFallback>
            <UserLocale>en-ZA</UserLocale>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP-UX" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <SkipAutoActivation>true</SkipAutoActivation>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-SQMApi" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <CEIPEnabled>0</CEIPEnabled>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <ComputerName></ComputerName>
            <CopyProfile>true</CopyProfile>
            <DisableAutoDaylightTimeSet>true</DisableAutoDaylightTimeSet>
            <RegisteredOrganization></RegisteredOrganization>
            <RegisteredOwner></RegisteredOwner>
            <OEMName></OEMName>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <settings pass="oobeSystem">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <OOBE>
                <HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
                <HideOEMRegistrationScreen>true</HideOEMRegistrationScreen>
                <HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
                <ProtectYourPC>3</ProtectYourPC>
                <SkipUserOOBE>true</SkipUserOOBE>
            </OOBE>
            <RegisteredOrganization></RegisteredOrganization>
            <RegisteredOwner></RegisteredOwner>
            <DisableAutoDaylightTimeSet>true</DisableAutoDaylightTimeSet>
            <TimeZone>South Africa Standard Time</TimeZone>
        </component>
    </settings>
    <cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim:d:/temp/windows%2011/21h2/uefi/sources/install.wim#Windows 10 Pro" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />
</unattend>

I agree with hsehestedt that it would be best to learn and start using Windows System Image Manager. My journey with answer files also started with online generators but they never worked 100% since they are generated with too many of the options being assumed. With Windows SIM you have 100% control of every single option and when saving the files it verifies it also.

Regarding the three methods, I have given you the example in the code previously, but since you don't seem to be familiar with the syntax and missed it, here it is again highlighted in bold

Code:

<ImageInstall>
    <OSImage>
        <WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI>
        <InstallTo>
            <DiskID>0</DiskID>
            <PartitionID>4</PartitionID>
        </InstallTo>
        <InstallFrom>
            <MetaData wcm:action="add">
                <Key>/Image/Index</Key>
                <Value>6</Value>
            </MetaData>
        </InstallFrom>
    </OSImage>
</ImageInstall>
<UserData>
    <ProductKey>
        <Key></Key>
    </ProductKey>
    <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
</UserData>

Taking the time to learn Windows SIM and the required components of the answer files and their syntax will save you more time than getting it to work with trial and error from online resources. It seems you have been struggling with this for almost two days now; which is much longer than it will take to install SIM and learn to generate a barebones autounattend file with it

.

Even the answer file I have sent you now will need some modification since your locale and input settings will probably need to be different; but at least it will get you onto the desktop when doing an install. Good luck!