Early speculation re unattended installs with Win 11

hsehestedt · Jun 23, 2021

I've become rather addicted to unattended installation and related topics with Win 10 thanks to tutorials from Kari.

However, there is currently a big "gotcha" with Windows 10 and I'm curious to find out if the ADK for Windows 11 will solve this.

Bear with me, I need to provide a little background to explain this...

Microsoft's latest recommendations are that the recovery partition be placed on the drive last, after the partition where Windows is installed. In fact, if you do a normal installation of Windows, this is how it will be installed.

However, when you perform an unattended installation, you provide in the answer file information regarding how many partitions to create and what size to make each partition. For each partition you would specify a size for that partition, except for the Windows partition. For that partition, you instruct unattended setup to use all remaining space on the disk. As a result, there is no space left on the drive to allow you to create the recovery partition after the Windows partition. Because of this, with an unattended installation you would typically have to create the recovery partition before the Windows partition. This works fine but it just bugs me that it doesn't follow the latest guidance from Microsoft.

You could go about calculating exactly how much space is on the disk and specify a precise size for the Windows partition to leave space afterward for the recovery partition, but that would mean performing new calculations and modifying the answer file every time you use a different size disk.

I do have a workaround in place for this, but it is not at all simple. It involves injecting batch files into the WinPE image on the install media and modifying the answer file to run these at the very beginning of the installation process. In fact, I had to write a program to do this for me because it's such a pain in the keister to do manually all the time.

So all that background simply leads me to this question:

I wonder if Microsoft has something planned for unattended setup of Windows 11 that will allow you to create the Windows partition and then leave space sufficient to allow the creation of the recovery partition at the end of the disk.

I'm not expecting any answers to this now, but for anyone who may be playing with a pre-release ADK and Win 11 unattended installation, I'd appreciate hearing if you run into a way to do this.

jimbo45 · Jun 23, 2021

Hi there
One possible drawback in placing the recovery partition AFTER the Windows main partition is that if say you didn't use the whole HDD/SSD for Windows but now you want to increase the size of the windows partition it makes it a bit problematical especially if you have another OS on the same SSD. By having the recovery partition BEFORE the main Windows partition makes it a lot easier moving / re-sizing partitions without encountering errors using typical standard Partition Managers. (This isn't only applicable to W11 but W10 as well).

Cheers
jimbo

johnlgalt · Jun 23, 2021

The issue resides with the fact that the Microsoft guidelines for partition structure are not written to take into account various scenarios, especially like one that @jimbo45 mentions.

Plus, I get the feeling that these Microsoft guidelines were developed more for mechanical drives versus SSDs, because having the recovery partition at the end of the physical mechanical drive might have a performance benefit that is non-existent when using SSDs. I say might, because I honestly don't remember anymore if this was more of an issue with the IDE interface versus SATA, or a fault of older mechanical drives only,. but I do seem to recall reading something, somewhere, at some time, that there is some sort of performance hit on mechanical drives when accessing data from the relative beginning of the space versus relative end.

I may be way off base - but that is what I remember being the case. And if my memory pans out, it makes perfect sense as to why Microsoft was recommending the placement of the recovery partition at the physical end of space, and why it really doesn't matter all that much now, in terms of that performance hit, and also how it can be detrimental for other situations as the one Jimbo mentioned.

Of course, modern systems with SSDs seem to be less susceptible to errors when modifying partitions (regardless of where they reside), also, because (I think) the process is so much faster than on older mechanical drives, and still faster than even modern mechanical drives.

Again, I may be way off base here, but if memory serves me well, then these partition guidelines from Microsoft make more sense.

hsehestedt · Jun 23, 2021

I think that the issue is not so much that they want the recovery partition at the end for any performance issues, but it so that the size can be easily adjusted.

We've probably all seen systems where there is more than one recovery partition, a result of having to create a whole new partition if the old one is not large enough when an upgrade is performed.

With the new scheme, the Windows partition is shrunk and the Recovery partition employs the unique ability to expand backward into that freed space.

If you installed Win 11 clean (not using unattended setup) and you open Disk Management, you will see that the recovery partition is positioned last.

hsehestedt · Jun 23, 2021

I found the information where I had originally seen that recommendation. In case anyone is interested in a little lite reading :)

UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions

docs.microsoft.com

From that document:

"We recommend that you place this partition immediately after the Windows partition. This allows Windows to modify and recreate the partition later if future updates require a larger recovery image."

So, that makes sense because the requirements for the size of the recovery partition have crept up over time. The same article says that a minimum of 250MB is recommended, but I notice that is was created as 500MB in my Win 11 install by default.

johnlgalt · Jun 23, 2021

Thanks. I do recall going over that before. It makes a certain sort of sense.

Kari · Jun 28, 2021

About the location of the recovery partition: I explained all this in a post on Ten Forums in November 2019, when MS changed default Windows Setup disk layout in Version 20H1:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1195679634622472192

Short version of that quite long post:

Before v. 20H1, Windows Setup placed recovery partition first on system disk (yellow highlight in screenshot). When an upgrade needed more space for recovery partition, the original could not expand, EFI partition blocking its way. A new recovery partition was created directly acter C: partition (blue highlight):

Because recovery partition can something no other partition can, expand backwards if placed directly after C: partition, "stealing" space from it, this is a good place. In the future upgrades, there will be no need to create additional recovery partitions. Simply, next time recovery partition requires more space, it just takes that from C: (green highlight):

Size of C: partition should be fixed, not changed after a recovery partition is created after it. A mistake (big or small, pick your choice!) would for instance be shrink C: and create a new partition in freed space. Now, when again an upgrade requires more space for recovery partition, a new one (green highlight) would be created, again after C: partition, because the previous (blue highlight) can ONLY expand backwards when directly after C:

Quite simple!

Kari

Kari · Jun 28, 2021

OK, unattended deployment:

hsehestedt said:
I wonder if Microsoft has something planned for unattended setup of Windows 11 that will allow you to create the Windows partition and then leave space sufficient to allow the creation of the recovery partition at the end of the disk.

I'm not expecting any answers to this now, but for anyone who may be playing with a pre-release ADK and Win 11 unattended installation, I'd appreciate hearing if you run into a way to do this.

Seems that nothing will change.

Playing with WSIM, answer files and unattended deployment, the closest I can come is to simply not create a recovery partition. Here's a working autounattend.xml file for PRO edition, only creating EFI, MSR and Windows partitions, using all free space after first two for third, Windows partition:

XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
    <settings pass="windowsPE">
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <SetupUILanguage>
                <UILanguage>en-GB</UILanguage>
            </SetupUILanguage>
            <InputLocale>0409:0000040b</InputLocale>
            <UILanguage>en-GB</UILanguage>
            <UILanguageFallback>en-GB</UILanguageFallback>
            <UserLocale>en-GB</UserLocale>
            <SystemLocale>en-GB</SystemLocale>
        </component>
        <component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
            <DiskConfiguration>
                <Disk wcm:action="add">
                    <CreatePartitions>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>1</Order>
                            <Size>100</Size>
                            <Type>EFI</Type>
                        </CreatePartition>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>2</Order>
                            <Size>128</Size>
                            <Type>MSR</Type>
                        </CreatePartition>
                        <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Extend>true</Extend>
                            <Order>3</Order>
                            <Type>Primary</Type>
                        </CreatePartition>
                    </CreatePartitions>
                    <ModifyPartitions>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>1</Order>
                            <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
                            <Label>System</Label>
                            <Format>FAT32</Format>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>2</Order>
                            <PartitionID>2</PartitionID>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                        <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                            <Order>3</Order>
                            <PartitionID>3</PartitionID>
                            <Letter>C</Letter>
                            <Label>Windows</Label>
                            <Format>NTFS</Format>
                        </ModifyPartition>
                    </ModifyPartitions>
                    <WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk>
                    <DiskID>0</DiskID>
                </Disk>
            </DiskConfiguration>
            <UserData>
                <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
                <Organization>ACME Computers</Organization>
                <ProductKey>
                    <Key>VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T</Key>
                </ProductKey>
            </UserData>
            <ImageInstall>
                <OSImage>
                    <InstallTo>
                        <DiskID>0</DiskID>
                        <PartitionID>3</PartitionID>
                    </InstallTo>
                </OSImage>
            </ImageInstall>
        </component>
    </settings>
</unattend>

My solution, and recommendation: use MDT!

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit - Easy and Fast Windows Deployment

How to use MDT to deploy Windows 10

www.tenforums.com

Kari

johnlgalt · Jun 28, 2021

Makes sense. When I cleanly installed 10 early May (with pre-release preview 21H1) I go EFI / System / Recovery, the way Microsoft wants it to be. Upgrading to leak didn't change that at all. So I suppose 11 is happy with the structure.

hsehestedt · Jun 28, 2021

Kari said:
Seems that nothing will change.

Kari, thanks so much taking a look at that and letting me know what you found. I have a workaround for now. I have a script that I inject into the WinPE image that gets run very early in the unattended install process, before the disk is partitioned, that performs the disk configuration for me.

The one weakness of the script is that it assumes that you will be installing to disk 0. If installing elsewhere, I would have to modify the script.

Thanks again for your help!

Kari · Jun 28, 2021

hsehestedt said:
The one weakness of the script is that it assumes that you will be installing to disk 0. If installing elsewhere, I would have to modify the script.

I might have a solution for that. Today, too anxious to get first official Insider W11 build installed, will post here in very near future.

Kari

hsehestedt · Jun 28, 2021

LOL, I'm also installing as we speak

.

Thanks, Kari.

Jim123 · Feb 18, 2024

Hi all - Apologies for necrothreading, especially on my first post, but my question relates directly to the original question posed by @hsehestedt. I am also using an autounattend.xml and want to follow the most recent guidance on recovery partition placement. After reading Kari's post abut simply omitting the creation of a recovery partition in the <CreatePartitions> section, I did this, but expanded upon this by creating a batch file to create the recovery partition after the installation, as a command inside <FirstLogonCommands>.

Code:

<SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
    <Order>6</Order>
    <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
    <CommandLine>"%InstallDrive%:\cfs-extras\scripts\create_recovery_partition.cmd"</CommandLine>
    <Description>Create Recovery Partition</Description>
</SynchronousCommand>

Batch:

SETLOCAL
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN ('^""%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -command "$env:firmware_type"^"') DO SET "Firmware=%%A"


IF "%Firmware%" == "UEFI" (
SET "Partition_To_Shrink=3"
SET "Create_Partition_Cmd=create partition primary id=de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"
SET "Gpt_Attributes=gpt attributes =0x8000000000000001"
)
IF "%Firmware%" == "Legacy" (
SET "Partition_To_Shrink=2"
SET "Create_Partition_Cmd=create partition primary id=27"
SET "Gpt_Attributes= "
)


(
ECHO select disk 0
ECHO select partition %Partition_To_Shrink%
ECHO shrink desired=700 minimum=700
ECHO %Create_Partition_Cmd%
ECHO %Gpt_Attributes%
ECHO format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows RE tools"
ECHO exit
) | "%SystemRoot%\System32\diskpart.exe"


"%SystemRoot%\System32\ReAgentc.exe" /enable

I have tested this and it works adequately, but I'm wondering if my approach has any downsides? I feel like I must have missed something because it seems so simple.

Thanks

pseymour · Feb 18, 2024

This is pretty much how we do it where I work. It's been fine on thousands of machines.

One thing I would note is that Microsoft recommends a minimum recovery partition size of 990 MB. We create ours to be 986 MB.

hsehestedt · Feb 18, 2024

Looks good to me. Maybe I get a little carried away, but I create my Recovery Tools partition to be about 2 GB. But I do this simply because I always have plenty of spare space on my Windows drive.

But, @Jim123, I now have a question for you:

I notice that in your answer file snipet, you reference a path of %InstallDrive%. During unattended installation, does that resolve to X: (the RamDrive) created by setup, or does that actually resolve to drive that Windows setup was booted from? If that actually resolves to the Windows media boot drive I would kick myself for not knowing this extremely easy way of getting that drive letter!

BTW, welcome to ElevenForum!

Jim123 · Feb 18, 2024

pseymour said:
This is pretty much how we do it where I work. It's been fine on thousands of machines.

One thing I would note is that Microsoft recommends a minimum recovery partition size of 990 MB. We create ours to be 986 MB.

Thanks, that really useful to know

Jim123 · Feb 18, 2024

hsehestedt said:
Looks good to me. Maybe I get a little carried away, but I create my Recovery Tools partition to be about 2 GB. But I do this simply because I always have plenty of spare space on my Windows drive.

But, @Jim123, I now have a question for you:

I notice that in your answer file snipet, you reference a path of %InstallDrive%. During unattended installation, does that resolve to X: (the RamDrive) created by setup, or does that actually resolve to drive that Windows setup was booted from? If that actually resolves to the Windows media boot drive I would kick myself for not knowing this extremely easy way of getting that drive letter!

BTW, welcome to ElevenForum!

Thank you for the welcome, and for the information about how you're doing things

Yes, I created the InstallDrive environment variable, which is the drive letter of the USB drive, in the earlier <settings pass="specialize"> section, like this:

Code:

<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Deployment" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS"
    xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <RunSynchronous>
        <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
            <Order>1</Order>
            <Description>Set InstallDrive environment variable</Description>
            <Path>"%ComSpec%" /c FOR %i IN (C D E F G H I J K L N M O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) DO IF NOT DEFINED InstallDrive IF EXIST %i:\cfs-extras "%SystemRoot%\System32\setx.exe" InstallDrive %i /M</Path>
        </RunSynchronousCommand>
    </RunSynchronous>
</component>

This simply checks each drive for a directory that's known to exist on the USB stick, and if it exists, it sets an InstallDrive environment variable to the drive letter of the drive with that directory. In the above this is a directory named cfs-extras. You can then reference %InstallDrive% later on in <settings pass="oobeSystem"> commands/scripts. At the end of this section, I remove the environment variable with:

Code:

<SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
    <Order>7</Order>
    <RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
    <CommandLine>"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -command [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('InstallDrive',$null,'Machine')</CommandLine>
    <Description>Remove InstallDrive machine environment variable. Always run this last.</Description>
</SynchronousCommand>

...just to keep things clean and tidy.

hsehestedt · Feb 18, 2024

Thanks for sharing that information.

Topgundcp · Feb 20, 2024

Assuming Disk 0 is used to install Windows.
The diskpart commands to create the partitions:
select disk=0
clean
convert gpt
create partition efi size=100
format quick fs=fat32
create partition msr size=16
create partition primary
shrink minimum=2000
format quick fs=ntfs label="windows"
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="recovery"
set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac"
gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001

Note that the shrink command will make roon of 2 Gb for Recovery partition

So the unattended file should contain the commands above:

Code:

<ImageInstall>
                    <OSImage>
                        <InstallToAvailablePartition>true</InstallToAvailablePartition>
                    </OSImage>
                </ImageInstall>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>1</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo select disk=0"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>2</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo clean"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>3</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo convert gpt"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>4</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo create partition efi size=100"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>5</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo format quick fs=fat32"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>6</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo create partition msr size=16"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>7</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo create partition primary"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>8</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo shrink minimum=2000"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>9</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo format quick fs=ntfs label="windows""</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>10</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo create partition primary"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>11</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo format quick fs=ntfs label="recovery""</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>12</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo set id="de94bba4-06d1-4d40-a16a-bfd50179d6ac""</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>13</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.txt" echo gpt attributes=0x8000000000000001"</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>
                <runsynchronouscommand wcm:action="add">
                    <order>14</order>
                    <path>cmd.exe /c "&gt;&gt;"x:\diskpart.log" diskpart.exe /s "x:\diskpart.txt""</path>
                </runsynchronouscommand>

Early speculation re unattended installs with Win 11

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