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WinPE OS Install

Posted: 07. Dec 2017, 15:02
by ctearney
We just updated to the 17.0.1 update 1 with the November hotfix & WinPE update and are trying out the new WinPE OS imaging process. The setup was easy and straightforward and we are able to get test systems to boot download and boot off of the WinPE PXE boot image.

We can see the WPEINIT DOS window followed by the Matrix42 progress window that says "Welcome to the Matrix42 Windows PE based OS Installer" which stays on the screen for about 3 minutes before rebooting. After the reboot the drive is not imaged (I have an old image on the system and it booted into that). I checked the logs in the EMC and they don't show any entries for the attempted image.

My guess is that I am missing something in the setup but have read thru the document several times and cant see where I overlooked anything. Has anyone else tried the new WinPE image process?

Re: WinPE OS Install

Posted: 14. Dec 2017, 00:26
by ctearney
I believe I found the issue that I explained in my previous post. Within the OS Installer>Import portion of the EMC I had 2 Windows 10 OS Packages that had the same "OS Package" label of "windows 10 x64 English (United States)_0. One of the packages we do not use any more so I deleted it and then verified the variables in the configuration group. After doing that the WinPE image process load the OS onto the drive and completed as expected.

One thing I noticed though is that the image process stopped at the selection screen to choose which OS type to load (i.e. Windows 10 Education, Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Enterprise N, etc...). I had downloaded from MSDN the later 1709 ISO and the only option for download, unlike previous editions, was an ISO containing all the various versions. This means we have to put into the OS load script which indexed OS type to use. I need to look at the WinPE image documentation to see if this is covered anywhere.

**Microsoft changed the way they offer the volume license ISO for Windows 10 so we now have to specify an index # in the imaging process. How will the WinPE process handle this and is this already an available feature?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... s-10-media

Re: WinPE OS Install

Posted: 21. Dec 2017, 16:52
by ctearney
With the release of update 2 the WinPE imaging process was redone and there at new PreOS Packages available. Anyone now the difference between the SimpleOSDeployment3.0 package and the WindowsInstallation3.0 package?

Re: WinPE OS Install

Posted: 22. Dec 2017, 15:04
by hdroege
Hi,
the SimpleOSDeployment was the initial package. It combines partitioning and Windows installation.
The WindowsInstallation is only Windows and requires the use of the Partitioning package.
There is always a Readme.txt in the package.

And with 17.0 Update 2 there are new features (import via console, x86/BIOS/UEFI).

The latest How-to is available on the WinPE add-on page in the Marketplace.

Re: WinPE OS Install

Posted: 22. Dec 2017, 16:27
by ctearney
Thank you for the explanation. I assumed that was the case from reading the "readme" but wanted to verify.

Re: WinPE OS Install

Posted: 03. Jan 2018, 17:32
by ctearney
ctearney wrote: **Microsoft changed the way they offer the volume license ISO for Windows 10 so we now have to specify an index # in the imaging process. How will the WinPE process handle this and is this already an available feature?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... s-10-media
I will put a suggestion on the Ideas portal to have some variables added but in the mean time I updated the unattend.xml to force a specific index. Below is what/where I modified this from the original Matrix42 provided xml.

<ImageInstall>
<OSImage>
<InstallTo>
<DiskID>0</DiskID>
<PartitionID>[SystemPartitionId]</PartitionID>
</InstallTo>
<InstallFrom>
<Path>[OsSourcePath]\VISTADVD\sources\install.wim</Path>
<MetaData wcm:action="add">
<Key>/IMAGE/Index</Key>
<Value>3</Value>
</MetaData>
</InstallFrom>
</OSImage>