For a Limited Audience: A Collection of Generic Answer Files, Each with a Different Purpose

hsehestedt said:

8Just saw your post so I see that you are already aware of the issue involving that partition and clearing up space by deleting fonts.

Hmmm, not too sure what is going on yet. I'm going to research more but it's possible that I may need to go as far as installing 23H2 and then trying to upgrade to 24H2.

Question: Have you tried to install 23H2 with the answer file, then go straight to an upgrade to 24H2 without installing other software? If that works it points to something being caused by software installed after the initial installation of Windows.

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At this point, we are required to be on 24H2 for SOC. If the machine cannot be upgraded manually I send them a new machine and they send back the one and I do a clean install of 24H2 and send that to another user. But if this can be solved I can work with them to do the install themselves. In using Intune I push all our applications out so I just have Windows to install with basic drivers and then run the update utility of the manufacture to get missing drivers. It is pretty slick and your way of laying down the OS was *chef's kiss* and made it worth while to wipe a machine from right from the start when it is delivered to have a nice clean Windows on it.

garlin said:

Are these Dell or HP systems? I've read on OSD forums, if you allow them to update your BIOS, some of those files are cached in the EFI partition. The solution is to bump up the EFI size, or write a script to clean outdated versions before doing any upgrades.

Low Space on EFI (System) Partition – Clean up

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Out of 300 Windows machines, Dell is about 70%, HP is about 20% (trying to phase it out, but Europeans love HP for some reason) and 10% or so are Surface Laptop for Business or Laptop Studio.

@bradyholt, I'll do my best to see what I can determine.

Note: I am far from an expert in this. For example, can you believe that I have never once even used a SetupComplete.cmd?

But, bear with me and let me see if I can figure anything out.

hsehestedt said:

Garlin, that is interesting. But also interesting is that he is doing the same thing that I do - making that partition 260 MB. This is a practice that I adopted to ensure compatibility on all systems since 260 MB is the minimum size for a FAT32 partition on advanced format drives. So, I just use 260 MB to get along with any systems, including the unlikely event that I encounter an advanced format drive.

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Here is the one that I used that doesn't put the partition in the recommended Microsoft order that still works. But like I said I want to use your idea and put the partitions in the recommended order.

hsehestedt said:

@bradyholt, I'll do my best to see what I can determine.

Note: I am far from an expert in this. For example, can you believe that I have never once even used a SetupComplete.cmd?

But, bear with me and let me see if I can figure anything out.

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Neither am I... which is why I am here. But I have been doing this for some time. When you have hundreds of machines to deal with you learn as many short cuts as you can, but over time I have also learned you want to try and keep those shortcuts in the standards that are stated.

Learning about some of the OEM things really makes supporting machines rewarding. Here are a couple of articles to start your path. I have a decent amount of understanding of it and have been using the $OEM$ and SetupComplete.cmd for some time. If you need any clarification, if I can enlighten I will.

$OEM$
SetupComplete.cmd

bradyholt said:

Here are a couple of articles to start your path.

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Thanks! Very much appreciated.

hsehestedt said:

Thanks! Very much appreciated.

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My help was much easier than what you are looking at...

So here is my contribution that could help you if you ever go for the use of the SetupComplete.cmd. I usually have 2 - 4 commands that run in the setupcomplete.cmd and in order to get it to run even if you don't use an answer file it will run if you have it in the proper places.

In the sources folder of your installer create this sub folder structure

$OEM$
Then create 2 more folders inside
$$ and $1 ($$ = %windir% or C:\Windows and $1 = %SystemDrive% or root of C: )
Then in $$ create folder Setup
Then in Setup create Scripts Inside of the $OEM$>$$>Setup>Scripts folder is where SetupComplete.cmd goes
Then in the $1 create folder temp
Then in temp create 2 folders drivers and apps So you now have $OEM$>$1>temp>apps and $OEM$>$1>temp>drivers

Then this is a simple SetupComplete.cmd I have

pnputil /add-driver C:\temp\drivers\*.inf /subdirs /install
msiexec.exe /I C:\temp\apps\DCU-5.4.1.msi /qn

During the Windows installation the $OEM$ folder gets copied to the corresponding windir or SystemDrive of the Windows drive

The first line uses the Windows plug and play utility to install all extracted drivers in that location and the second line installs the msi version of Dell Command Update. (This way as soon as a user logs in I have them run the update utility to get any missing drivers)

I also have installed the latest .NET runtime and other useful items specific to the user I am installing it for. This way I only have to update the files and not the answerfile.

bradyholt said:

So here is my contribution that could help you if you ever go for the use of the SetupComplete.cmd.

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Thanks! I'll be trying all this in the next few days for sure.

I have an update for you.

I wanted to use your answer file in this test, but it's missing at least the section where you create a user account. So, I substituted my answer file.

The end result is that I had no problems.

Here are the steps I took:

1) Install 23H2, April 2025 Update

2) After installation I run Windows update and Microsoft Store app to update all apps.

3) Ran setup from the 24H2, April 2025 ISO image.

Everything worked flawlessly.

So, I still would like to see you setup a 23H2 system with your answer file, but don't install any additional software onto it. Then see if the upgrade to 24H2 is successful.

hsehestedt said:

I have an update for you.

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I took out the section of creating a user because there is no need to because during setup the user signs in with their Azure account that joins it to Azure/Intune. I then wrote a powershell script that creates the local user.