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

Sorry for the slow response, I've been away a few days. Let me look into the issues that were raised, but before I do, would you mind testing an updated version? I have done quite a bit of tweaking and made a few enhancements to the sections of code in question, so I'd like to get your feedback as to whether you see the same issues with the changes that I have now made.

After you create your disk with either the batch file of the executable, don't forget to place your ISO images in the "ISO Images" folder of the second volume.

I also finished the batch file version of that code. The batch file version doesn't do everything the Wim Tools program does, but it does most of what is typically needed. It's also just a good way to see what I am doing.

Attached is a ZIP file that includes both the batch file and an updated WiM Tools executable. Let me know what your results are.

For the WimTools.exe

Wim Tools (run as admin)
selected: 5.) Make or update a bootable drive from one or more Windows / WinPE / WinRE ISO images
selected: 2.) Create or refresh boot media to allow booting from an unlimited numer of ISO images
selected: 1.) WIPE DISK

ERROR MSG POPUP:
"Unhandled Error #53 - Wim Tools....
Line: 14772 (in main module) ----- [before it was in line 14691]
File not found
Continue ?


_______________

the Create_Disk.bat is working



additional Information:

tested this one on a Windows 10 Laptop too.
Windows 10 22h2 - 19045.3693

adu78 said:

For the WimTools.exe

Wim Tools (run as admin)
selected: 5.) Make or update a bootable drive from one or more Windows / WinPE / WinRE ISO images
selected: 2.) Create or refresh boot media to allow booting from an unlimited numer of ISO images
selected: 1.) WIPE DISK

ERROR MSG POPUP:
"Unhandled Error #53 - Wim Tools....
Line: 14772 (in main module) ----- [before it was in line 14691]
File not found
Continue ?


_______________

the Create_Disk.bat is working



additional Information:

tested this one on a Windows 10 Laptop too.
Windows 10 22h2 - 19045.3693

Click to expand...

I may have an idea of what is happening. I know that the program will clearly be running as admin, but are you yourself logged in with an admin account or just a standard user?

Also, before the error pops up, do you get a message that says "Building a list of disks in the system..."?

What it is supposed to be doing at that point is actually pretty simple. It's running diskpart to get a list of available disks in the system and then allowing you to choose the disk to use. It's supposed to look like this:



NOTE: Above is only a sample. I don't even have a USB disk or thumb drive connected at the time I ran this.

It does create a temporary file so that it can parse the disk information at that time and I suppose that is the file it is complaining about. It does that in the Temp folder location and only thing I can think is that it cannot create that file or access it for some reason.

Update: The line of code it is failing on is indeed related to that temporary file. It's very simple and looks like this:

Kill "DiskDetail.txt"

That tells me that it for some reason probably failed to create that file in the first place and it's failing because it is trying to kill a file that does not exist. I'll take a look at this to see if I can figure out what might cause that to happen.

Hello @hsehestedt ,
1. I used your newly created tool attached in post #24.
2. Again the same result as I have stated in my post #20. The tool successfully completed the creation of bootable usb on Windows 11 v 23H2 build 22631.2506 but failed on build 22631.2715
3. I have attached the images herewith. Please see.
4. After pressing enter on continue , it return back to main dashboard of WIM-TOOLS.
5. BOTH PARTITIONS OF USB PLUGGED IN ARE EMPTY.
6. I TRIED ON Windows 11 v 23H2 build 22631.2506 and created third bootable usb for me.

hsehestedt said:

I may have an idea of what is happening. I know that the program will clearly be running as admin, but are you yourself logged in with an admin account or just a standard user?

Click to expand...

All 3 are admin accounts.

On the Windows 11 PC it is an account with admin privileges that is logged into MS-Account.
In the Virtual Box Windows 11 it is an local admin account.
On the Windows 10 Laptop it is an local admin account.

Ramesh, I know what very likely is causing the "access is denied" messages that you are seeing.

This is one of the real annoyances of mounting and servicing Windows images. Once you mount an image, if something interrupts the process before the image is successfully dismounted, files remain stuck in a mounted state even if you reboot the system.

I'm to work on doing some automatic detection and mitigation of this in the program, but in the meantime, please try this:

If you have not rebooted the system since seeing those errors, please reboot.

Open an elevated command prompt.

run this command:

dism /Get-MountedImageInfo

If any mounts are shown, run this command but replace C:\Project\Mount with the mount path that was shown:

DISM /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"C:\Project\Mount" /Discard

Run the following commands regardless of whether or not any mounts were shown above:

DISM /Cleanup-WIM DISM /Cleanup-Mountpoints C:\windows\system32\takeown /f "C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp\*.*" /r /d y icacls "C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp\*.*" /T /grant %username%:F

Clear out the contents of the recycle bin.

Now, see if you can delete the folder C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp from File explorer.

NOTE: I already check for this condition and try to remediate it in some other areas of the program, but I'll have to add a check for this state in this section as well.

@adu78, I'll need to look further into what it is you are encountering. Could you just tell me if your Windows installation is using the US English version and locale settings or are you running anything different (for example, international English)?

@hsehestedt

I am from Germany. Windows is set to german language.

CONGRATULATIONS @hsehestedt .
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
Your suggestions helped me to create the bootable usb of WIM-TOOLS on Windows 11 v23H2 build 23631.2715
Here are steps and Images attached herewith respectively.
1. I plugged in blank 32 gb usb and run create disk batch file.
2. It created two partitions but failed to copy WinPE files as earlier, bringing the same postion as I saw earlier.
3. I run all commands one by one and could finally delete temp folder.
4. dism /Get-MountedImageInfo, this command gave the result. Please see the images attached herewith.
5. DISM /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"C:\Project\Mount" /Discard, this command failed (I replaced the path with the address of directory as in my case in C: drive.) Log file of DISM compressed is attached for your information. Please have a look.
6. DISM /Cleanup-WIM
7. DISM /Cleanup-Mountpoints
8 C:\windows\system32\takeown /f 9."C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp\*.*" /r /d y
10. icacls
11 "C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp\*.*" /T /grant %username%:F
12. Finally I could delete the empty folder as well as empty recycle bin (note that recycle bin was already empty)
13. Then again I ran create disk batch file.
14. This time WinPE files were successfully copied without any errors.
15. I copied all 7 answer files to Answer Files folder.
16. I copied Windows 11 v23H2 iso ti Iso Images folder.
17 Then right click Config_UFD , selected 5 th option to bypass requirements only.(please be careful to type the correct option number as it varies from user to user who places 1, 2,3, 4, any number of answer files in Answer Files folder)
18. YES, NOW I HAVE 4TH BOOTABLE USB OF LATEST WIM-TOOLS PREPARED ON WINDOWS 11 V 23H2 BUILD 22631.2715
Thanks for reading this post.

takeown /d is answered differently based on language.

auf Deutsch, your local command is:
C:\windows\system32\takeown /f "C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp\*.*" /r /d j

garlin said:

takeown /d is answered differently based on language.

Code:

/D        Aufforderung       Standardantwort, die verwendet wird, wenn der
                             aktuelle Benutzer nicht die Berechtigung
                             "Ordner auflisten" für ein Verzeichnis hat.
                             Tritt bei der rekursiven Bearbeitung (/R)
                             von Unterverzeichnissen auf. Gültige Werte
                             sind "J" zum Übernehmen der Besitzrechte
                             oder "N" zum Auslassen dieses Schrittes.

auf Deutsch, your local command is:
C:\windows\system32\takeown /f "C:\users\rss05\appdata\local\temp\wim_tools_temp\*.*" /r /d j

Click to expand...

I have no idea what any of the means, but thanks

adu78 said:

@hsehestedt

I am from Germany. Windows is set to german language.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, ok. Now it makes sense. I assume English only. I have done zero testing with anything else. My apologies! I guess that I should make that more clear right at the outset.

The affirmative is localized:

cmd batch - command or alias for "localized yes message or letter" for scripts

I know this is a Windows 11 forum, but - does that en-001 trick work for Windows 10, too? I've been debloating W11's menu with this method from PDQ and it's worked great, but I've been wishing I had something similar for W10.

Also, I was referred to you from a thread I made, so I'll ask the question here. If you script (either a batch file, or via synchronous commands) an installation that partitions disk 0, and disk 0 can't be found, will the answer fille crash, or will it just fail and wait for user input? Right now I have to have two sets of answer files for W10 and W11 because sometimes I run into a laptop where you have to load drivers to get the boot disk to appear. Kind of annoying to juggle the extra files, would be great if I didn't have to.

Right now even with the 'On Error' box checked for disk configuration, the answer file will always make a terminating error if disk 0 can't be found.

Jalopy said:

does that en-001 trick work for Windows 10, too?

Click to expand...

That's a good question. This is a trick that I only leaned about myself a few months ago and I have never tried it with Win 10. It would be a simple matter to test it - simply deploy a quick installation to a VM and see what happens.

Jalopy said:

f you script (either a batch file, or via synchronous commands) an installation that partitions disk 0, and disk 0 can't be found, will the answer fille crash, or will it just fail and wait for user input?

Click to expand...

Yes, it doesn't have any sort of intelligent handling of errors. In other words, it's not smart enough to stop and ask you for information if it fails. It has no mechanism for getting user input as it is expected to be a fully automated installation.

There is an exception to this (please see my response to you in the other related thread). Put simply, you can opt to kip a section in the answer file which then forces the standard Windows prompts for information. Remember, the answer file is just that - it's mainly answers to data you would input manually during installation. So if we don't provide an answer, for example, if we don't tell it what disk to install to, then Windows reverts back to asking us for that information.

Again, see the other thread.

NIce autounattend files. I think it's also helpful to include a command so Windows won't force
you to update your logon password out of the blue:

CanOWorms said:

NIce autounattend files. I think it's also helpful to include a command so Windows won't force
you to update your logon password out of the blue:

CSS:

<SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
<Order>3</Order>
<RequiresUserInput>false</RequiresUserInput>
<CommandLine>cmd /C wmic useraccount where name="User1" set PasswordExpires=false</CommandLine>
<Description>Password Never Expires</Description>
</SynchronousCommand>

Click to expand...

Thanks, CanOWorms. That's a helpful addition.

Follow-up: Only problem with that is that I just noticed that you are using WMIC which is now deprecated.

I used " Fully Unattended Installation, Creates Recovery Partition Last "
and i run into an error as below, Any Help Please

Windows could not parse or process unattend answer file
[C:\\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml] for pass [oobeSystem].
The settings specified in answer file cannot be applied.
The error was detected while processing setting for
component [Microsoft-Windows-Shill-Setup].

OK. I last burned a 22h2 iso and I've gotten no change password instructions in the last six months. But thanks for the head's up when I upgrade to 23H2 and newer versions.