Making Win 11 golden image using WinPE and DISM - but boot entries are not correct when FFU is pushed


theRAW

New member
Local time
7:40 PM
Posts
1
OS
Windows 11
Hello everyone, been reading a lot from here but first time poster.

To summarize:
1. Spin up VM and install Win11 24H2 official Microsoft ISO
2. Boot the VM, immediately go into Audit mode from the first OOBE screen (CTRL + SHIFT + F3)
3. Install apps, configure Windows settings, etc.
4. Run Sysprep as very last step: sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:E:\Unattend\Unattend.xml
5. VM shuts down. Attach WinPE ISO, boot to WinPE.
6. dism /capture-ffu /imagefile=E:\Test.ffu /capturedrive=\\.\physicaldrive0 /name:disk0 /description:"ffu test"
7. Copy and paste that FFU to a USB stick.
8. On target physical computer, insert that stick and a stick with the same WinPE ISO made bootable
9. Boot to WinPE: dism /apply-ffu /imagefile=D:\Test.ffu /applydrive:\\.\physicaldrive0
10. Then I use the exit command in WinPE to reboot, and we boot into Windows successfully.
11. BUT, I reboot and then I get errors and can't boot to Windows.

I figured out that if I boot to WinPE again and run bcdboot C:\Windows, where C is the drive letter we pushed the FFU to, I now get the choice of two Windows boot options. One boot fails, the other successfully boots to Windows, then I can go into msconfig and delete the faulty boot entry and everything works well.

But I'd like to avoid running the bcdboot command and deleting from msconfig.

Does anyone know a solution where all I do is push the FFU and it works? Maybe just a switch on the DISM commands I am missing or something?

I also have another issue where I was trying to use the answer file to create and set the partitions so that the Windows partition is the right-most partition, so that when the FFU is pushed, I can just extend the Windows partition in diskpart to take up the entirety of the storage. However this makes DISM fail on the /apply-ffu step. Should that be a separate thread? Thanks everyone.
 
Windows Build/Version
Win 11 24H2 26100.1742

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Precision 7680
In this guide, we’ll cover how to create a custom Windows 10/11 installation image with pre-installed apps, necessary files, and other environment and application settings.

 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 11
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
    Motherboard
    Erica6
    Memory
    Micron Technology DDR4-3200 16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC671
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Samsung SyncMaster U28E590
    Screen Resolution
    3840 x 2160
    Hard Drives
    SAMSUNG MZVLQ1T0HALB-000H1
Back
Top Bottom