DISM - Clone and Deploy using FFU Image  

Thanks Kari:

I used the instructions with a vhdx I made in Hyper-V to install Windows 10X. They were spot on. BTW Windows 10X is a beautiful thing!

Karl,

Going back to page 4 post #35 jpose posted about getting an error 1168 when attempting to run DISM mount on an ffu image. I believe this is due to Mount not being able to complete processing of an ffu file as the output is not what Mount expects so it errors out.

If you run Mount against an ffu image and wait for it to error out then, open Disk Management and you will find that a new disk appears. This is the result of Mount and means mount was successful but the output was unexpected. If you open Explorer you will find the disk and it can be fully navigated.

What happens is that Mount after processing outputs a VHD file held in the User Temp folder. You can search for the file name followed by * and the .vhd extension to locate the file. It is then possible to use a conversion tool to convert it to VHDX format and boot it in a Hyper V instance. Takes a while to load but does work.

Dear Kari.

I'm making a Windows 10 20H2 image for the deployment of my office notebooks with a 2-partition layout, Windows and Data. Given that the 2004/20H2 partition layout places the recovery partition at the end of the storage, how do you restore a saved FFU Windows image to a hardrive/ssd that is larger than the reference storage?

Kari said:

OK, about applying an FFU image to a virtual hard disk.

First, virtual hard disk file must be .vhdx, it will not work if applied to a .vhd file.

Second, the applied FFU image must be captured from a generalized (sysprepped) Windows. This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to capture an existing Windows installation to FFU image to be applied to VHDX, because generalizing will usually fail. Applied to physical disks, no need to generalize, but to apply to a virtual hard disk, generalizing is a must.

Trying to generalize an existing Windows installation on a test machine, I first removed all Store apps and their provisioning, which typically cause Sysprep with /generalize switch t fail. It did not work. Even after disabling reserved space in registry, I kept getting this error:

Code:

2019-06-01 15:16:15, Error SYSPRP Sysprep_Clean_Validate_Opk: Audit mode cannot be turned on if reserved storage is in use. An update or servicing operation may be using reserved storage.; hr = 0x800F0975

I am quite experienced Sysprep user, but hit the wall here; nothing I tried to generalize an existing Windows installation worked. I am open for new ideas, though.

----snip--------

Kari

Hi everyone, I'm not sure if this helps, but I got this same error and I managed to run sysprep in audit mode after installing some outstanding Windows Updates. Apparently the updates were downloaded but not installed, which is why sysprep kept throwing the error.

Hey folks,

Was reading through a while back and saw that people were having issues with split-ffu, I chatted with MS about it and they found the root cause and they said they are going to have a fix out "soon" for the actual split-ffu and apply-ffu commands.

However there is a workaround that works currently, simply take the same flags you would use with split-ffu and instead just call split-image. The same deal with apply, instead of using apply-ffu, use apply-image with apply-ffu flags. Example:

PS C:\Users\mitd> dism /Split-image /Imagefile:"D:\ffu\install.ffu" /SFUFile:"D:\ffu\split.sfu" /FileSize:4000


PS C:\Users\mitd> dism /Apply-Image /Imagefile:"c:\Users\mitd\Desktop\split.sfu" /SFUFile:"C:\Users\mitd\Desktop\split*.sfu" /ApplyDrive:\\.\PhysicalDrive1

Both of those worked and was able to apply it on a live system and in winPE.

Hopefully this helps.

Hi,

I installed a fresh copy of Windows Home v21H1. In audit mode, I ran installed all the Windows Updates and then ran System Prep with "System Cleanup Action > Enter System Audit mode" and shutdown the system. I then booted to WinPE and was able to successfully capture an FFU image to a network share.

I was also able to successfully deploy this image to another machine with a larger SSD.

However, anything with a small drive won't work so I ran the 'Optimize-FFU' command from the Deployment and Imaging Tools command prompt on my sever which hosts the network share and that process went through successfully. My understanding is that this modifies the image so that it will work on small drive sizes.

My issue is that AFTER running this 'Optimize-FFU' the image will not deploy on ANY machines.

When I try to deploy the 'optimized' image to the same machines the original image worked or any other machine on I get an error: 0x8000ffff

ANY IDEAS?

Here is the log file:

Code:

2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   PID=1488 TID=1464 Scratch directory set to 'X:\windows\TEMP\'. - CDISMManager::put_ScratchDir
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   PID=1488 TID=1464 DismCore.dll version: 10.0.22000.1 - CDISMManager::FinalConstruct
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   Initialized Panther logging at X:\windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   PID=1488 TID=1464 Successfully loaded the ImageSession at "X:\windows\system32\Dism" - CDISMManager::LoadLocalImageSession
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   Initialized Panther logging at X:\windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM Provider Store: PID=1488 TID=1464 Found and Initialized the DISM Logger. - CDISMProviderStore::Internal_InitializeLogger
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   Initialized Panther logging at X:\windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM Manager: PID=1488 TID=1464 Successfully created the local image session and provider store. - CDISMManager::CreateLocalImageSession
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: 
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: <----- Starting Dism.exe session ----->
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: 
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: Host machine information: OS Version=10.0.22000, Running architecture=amd64, Number of processors=4
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: Dism.exe version: 10.0.22000.1
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: Executing command line: dism  /apply-ffu /ImageFile=W:\Win10-9-5-21.ffu /ApplyDrive:\\.\PhysicalDrive0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: CFfuMiscHelpersT<class CEmptyType>::GetSignerInfoFromCatalog#998 failed with 0x80091008.
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider: -------- Security Header ----------------------------------
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:                     Size = 32
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:                Signature = SignedImage 
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:            ChunkSizeInKB = 128
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:              AlgorithmId = 32780
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:              CatalogSize = 328
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:            HashTableSize = 5505024
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider: ----------- Image Header ----------------------------------
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:                     Size = 24
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:                Signature = ImageFlash  
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:           ManifestLength = 1723
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:                ChunkSize = 128
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider: ----------- Store Header ----------------------------------
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:               UpdateType = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:             MajorVersion = 1
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:             MinorVersion = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:    FullFlashMajorVersion = 3
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:    FullFlashMinorVersion = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:               PlatformId = 
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:                BlockSize = 131072
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:     WriteDescriptorCount = 172004
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:    WriteDescriptorLength = 3440080
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:  ValidateDescriptorCount = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider: ValidateDescriptorLength = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:        InitialTableIndex = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:        InitialTableCount = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:      FlashOnlyTableIndex = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:      FlashOnlyTableCount = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:          FinalTableIndex = 0
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:          FinalTableCount = 172004
2021-09-05 13:56:54, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider:     CompressionAlgorithm = 3
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Info                  DISM   DISM FFU Provider: Anti-theft feature is not supported on this machine.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: (Partition) Name is not present in manifest.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: CManifest::GetDriveLayoutInfoEx#788 failed with 0x8000ffff.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: CFfuReader::ProcessWriteDescriptors#1260 failed with 0x8000ffff.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: CFfuReader::PreApply#303 failed with 0x8000ffff.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: FfuApplyInternal#477 failed with 0x8000ffff.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: FfuApplyImage#85 failed with 0x8000ffff.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: PID=1488 TID=1464 onecore\base\ntsetup\opktools\dism\providers\ffuprovider\dll\ffumanager.cpp:515 - CFfuManager::Apply(hr:0x8000ffff)
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: PID=1488 TID=1464 Failed to apply an FFU image to '\\.\PhysicalDrive0'. - CFfuManager::InternalCmdApply(hr:0x8000ffff)
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: PID=1488 TID=1464 "Error executing command" - CFfuManager::InternalExecuteCmd(hr:0x8000ffff)
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM FFU Provider: PID=1488 TID=1464 onecore\base\ntsetup\opktools\dism\providers\ffuprovider\dll\ffumanager.cpp:224 - CFfuManager::ExecuteCmdLine(hr:0x8000ffff)
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Error                 DISM   DISM.EXE: FfuManager processed the command line but failed. HRESULT=8000FFFF
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: Image session has been closed. Reboot required=no.
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: 
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE: <----- Ending Dism.exe session ----->
2021-09-05 13:56:55, Info                  DISM   DISM.EXE:

Looking at the log file I notice that the output shows the apply command failed to write to PhysicalDrive0. Are you sure you have pointed to the correct target drive?

Yes. There is only a single drive inside the laptop. I'm booted up using a 2GB USB. In DiskPart I can see "Disk 0" is the 238GB drive that I want to dump the image to:

I wonder if a restart of the WinPE session would change the behavior? It could be Optimize changes were not committed to the image or that WinPE is not aware of them.