Problem creating GPT VHD automatically

hsehestedt said:

Fantastic. Thanks!

These may be of use

Code:

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Kari said:

@Martin, I would appreciate if you could test this PowerShell script of mine:

Download

Reading it in OneDrive, all remarks and comments are clearly shown as green. I recommend reading all remarks. Most important thing is variables in lines 78 to 80:

Attachment 288103

In lines 209 to 222, you tell the script which Windows optional features will be added to Windows image and VHD:

Attachment 288104

Please test the script and tell me what you think about it. Download the script, unblock it (important!), right click it, and select Run with PowerShell.

Kari

I have run into some issues as it kerps complaining about some command not having recurse option. Not at pc yest but problem arose after I stopped the script as I had to reboot pc due to an unrelates issue.

I will post some error message later.
I think it is related to temporary files not being cleaned up or stale mountpoints.

From a general viewpoint, it needs to be a little more flexible.

I think you need to modify the driver section.

Currently, it backups up all user drivers and injects them which takes time and can be overkill.
.

You should be able to configure a default driver directory and choose to use that, or just use host drivers as it does at moment.

There are times I do not want to inject host drivers e.g. I intend to use vhd on a different pc eventually.

Not clear if vhdx is expandable or fixed. This should be configurable.

With a little extra effort, you can set it up to install in S mode. See my command script. This would be handy do you could have a guest VHD more locked down.

Also, when you create a boot entry for the vhd, it becomes the default boot option. You should not change the default option from Host unless user choose to do so. Currently you have to run MSConfig afterwards to reset it.

On a more basic level, I would not expect a user to copy install.wim to a default directory.

Most users would just have an iso which could have install.wim or install.esd.

I would just tell users to mount an iso and specify directory. Thereafter the script copies install.wim or install.esd (converting it if necessary to install.wim).

I do not know if you could automate this e.g. configure iso path and name and mount it.

You could configure it to use install.wim as it does now as an option.

All temporary folders should be on same drive as the one creating VHD by default. I am thinking about pcs with limited space on Physical drive with C partition.


Optional future development - having gone through effort to create a vhd injecting drivers, I think you should allow user to create an iso bit that does require adk to be installed. I have no idea of this can be script automated.

Another optional feature would be to crrate a dual boot pc without using a vhd but this would need some unallocated space and probably only for UEFI pcs.

This would be handy for users who want to say put an Insider version and dual boot it. The problem as you know, is yiu cannot upgrade vhds without resorting to using a VM to do the upgrade - fairly easy for Pro users with HyperV , less so for Home users.

Overall, it has the makings of a great tool but I feel it needs a bit of work to make it really useful.

As an aside, my command prompt script does most of this now, so maybe publish both as mot all users are powershell experienced.

Thanks Martin, seems I need to work more with the script.

About the drivers, yes I think it would be better to offer three option: add all host drivers, add user specified drivers from user specified folder, or add no drivers.

The recurse error should not happen. For instance the drivers folder, it will be created in Temp:

$DriverFolder = Join-Path $env:Temp '\Drivers'

Then when user is asked if drivers should be added, script checks if the folder exists, and if yes, deletes it and with -Recurse parameter all files in it, then recreates an empty folder for exported drivers:

Code:

$AddDrivers = Read-Host -Prompt ' Do you want to add host device drivers to Windows image (Y or N)?'

    if (($AddDrivers -match 'Y') -or ($AddDrivers -match 'y'))
            {
            if (Test-Path $DriverFolder) {Remove-Item $DriverFolder -Recurse}
            $DriverFolder = New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $DriverFolder

Anyway, this is an interesting project. Thanks for your thoughts, I will continue working on it.

Kari

Kari said:

Thanks Martin, seems I need to work more with the script.

About the drivers, yes I think it would be better to offer three option: add all host drivers, add user specified drivers from user specified folder, or add no drivers.

The recurse error should not happen. For instance the drivers folder, it will be created in Temp:

$DriverFolder = Join-Path $env:Temp '\Drivers'

Then when user is asked if drivers should be added, script checks if the folder exists, and if yes, deletes it and with -Recurse parameter all files in it, then recreates an empty folder for exported drivers:

Code:

$AddDrivers = Read-Host -Prompt ' Do you want to add host device drivers to Windows image (Y or N)?'

    if (($AddDrivers -match 'Y') -or ($AddDrivers -match 'y'))
            {
            if (Test-Path $DriverFolder) {Remove-Item $DriverFolder -Recurse}
            $DriverFolder = New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $DriverFolder

Anyway, this is an interesting project. Thanks for your thoughts, I will continue working on it.

Kari

Something has glitched. It happened after I interrupted a job part way through. I am guessing things did not cleanup.

I suggest you cleanup first (just in case), do job, cleanup again.

cereberus said:

Something has glitched. It happened after I interrupted a job part way through. I am guessing things did not cleanup.

I suggest you cleanup first (just in case), do job, cleanup again.

Yeah - as I suspected, because I had interrupted a run, the mount directory and mount point had not been deleted and script fell over as shown.

Once I deleted them (had to go to Reflect in PE mode because of permissions to delete mount folder -quicker than messing around changing file onwerships), the script ran ok.

Just testing now.

When you interrupt the script, you can clear mount folder with following PS command:

Dismount-WindowsImage -Discard -Path $MountFolder

Kari

hsehestedt said:

Kari, I hope you don't mind my jumping in. I took a real quick glance at your script, and I was just wondering if you wanted to maybe add a quick check for the use of bitlocker on the C: drive prior to updating BCD. If I'm not mistaken, if bitlocker is in use on that drive, then modifying the the BCD will trigger it to ask for the recovery key on the next boot.

Bitlocker can be suspended prior to updating the BCD like this:

Code:

manage-bde -protectors -disable C:

Note that upon reboot, bitlocker will re-enable itself.

Also, the whole issue of interrupting an operation while a mountpoint was still active was a big problem for me for a while. I noticed that sometimes simply performing a discard operation was not enough.

I found that I sometimes had to run a series of 3 commands like this:

Code:

dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"D:\Project\Mount" /Discard
dism /Cleanup-WIM
dism /cleanup-mountpoints

I know that you are running a powershell command, so my apologies if that command basically does what all 3 of these do. I just wanted to mention it in case it could be of any help.

It has helped me - just created a batch file if I run into issue again.

A PS one-liner to check if $MountFolder has any files left from a previous mount, thus being not empty:

if (Test-Path $MountFolder\*) {Dismount-WindowsImage -Discard -Path $MountFolder}

Kari