To update Windows 11 iso use WIM Tools Version 21.6.0.239 by Hannes Sehestedt (@hsehestedt)

hsehestedt · Aug 9, 2023

Ramesh Sharma said:
So it means shift+F10 worked again which was discontinued from os build 1702

I'm not sure that I understand what this means. Are you trying to say that that this method does not work after build 1702? It works perfectly for me still.

Also, I'm failing to understand the sizes of the files that you are giving me. Maybe it's just awkward positioning of the commas. But in addition, you are listing the size in KB. You need to look at the size in BYTES because the size difference may be very small.

Is there any chance that you could post the original ISO image somewhere for me (OneDrive, Dropbox, etc)? I'd like to see what happens when I try to update it myself.

If that is not possible, how about just a copy of the original boot.wim and the modified boot.wim so that I can take a look at them to see if the changes were actually made. However, I would prefer the whole ISO image if that is possible.

Ramesh Sharma · Aug 9, 2023

hsehestedt said:
I'm not sure that I understand what this means. Are you trying to say that that this method does not work after build 1702? It works perfectly for me still.

Also, I'm failing to understand the sizes of the files that you are giving me. Maybe it's just awkward positioning of the commas. But in addition, you are listing the size in KB. You need to look at the size in BYTES because the size difference may be very small.

Is there any chance that you could post the original ISO image somewhere for me (OneDrive, Dropbox, etc)? I'd like to see what happens when I try to update it myself.

If that is not possible, how about just a copy of the original boot.wim and the modified boot.wim so that I can take a look at them to see if the changes were actually made. However, I would prefer the whole ISO image if that is possible.

Welcome @hsehestedt .
I meant, for me, Shift+F10 opens command prompt, but registry bypass merging was not opening EULA page for image having os build number 1702.
I had to stop at the screen showing error message'This pc can't run windows 11 '. After applying option 4 , even if I got error message on booting flash drive ,registry bypass trick, which was not working before using WIM TOOLS launched by you, worked this time. So Option 4 is must for me.
Please see images stored in Iso Images folder on my usb flash drive.
IMAGE SIZES ARE IN KB.

hsehestedt · Aug 9, 2023

If you right-click on a file and select Properties you can get the exact size of the file. I need precise sizes. Let's look at an example to clarify why. Suppose you have files with these sizes:

1,024 bytes
1,400 bytes

Both of those files would show up as 1 KB, but clearly they do have different sizes.

As for opening a command prompt, you should be able to do that at the very first static screen during Windows installation.

Ramesh Sharma · Aug 9, 2023

hsehestedt said:
If you right-click on a file and select Properties you can get the exact size of the file. I need precise sizes. Let's look at an example to clarify why. Suppose you have files with these sizes:

1,024 bytes
1,400 bytes

Both of those files would show up as 1 KB, but clearly they do have different sizes.

As for opening a command prompt, you should be able to do that at the very first static screen during Windows installation.

Shift+F10 opens command prompt, but to skip hardware requirements check, bypass file not worked for me as far as build number 1702 is considered. This was the situation before using WIM TOOLS, for me.
The old builds like 318 and onwards were easily bypassed by command prompt trick, by using bypass registry trick files.
Please find image showing properties.Please note that boot.wim is in sources folder of mounted image of iso file Win11v2.
Thanks.

johnlgalt · Aug 9, 2023

Glad to see these tools getting the respect and work-over that they deserve.

re: the ei.cfg - make it default automatically to [y] and explain that only in very special cases should that be changed in the help documentation, I think that would be fine.

hsehestedt · Aug 9, 2023

johnlgalt said:
Glad to see these tools getting the respect and work-over that they deserve.

re: the ei.cfg - make it default automatically to [y] and explain that only in very special cases should that be changed in the help documentation, I think that would be fine.

Thanks, John. I'll go ahead and do that - make it default to adding an ei.cfg since it I can only see it as beneficial and never hurting anything to have it there. I'll also strongly suggest accepting the default and see if I can revise the help for that topic to better explain the purpose of that file.

johnlgalt · Aug 9, 2023

I need to sit down and take some time to get this process working with your scripts to automate it as much as possible so I can slipstream my rig's drivers into a WIM for when I want to clean install, which I can then slipstream updates to right before the clean install.

I can easily get apps installed, as I've trimmed down most of my major use apps to portable versions, so they are always there, ready to go, and the majority of what I need to carry over is browser profiles and Thunderbird profiles.

I do install quite a few apps, but they are quick to install, and copying data back to their respective locations makes sure those apps function exactly as they did before.

But drivers are a PITA. I can export them in Driver Store Explorer easily enough, but not all of them are easy to figure out which device they belong to, so just being able to have them pre-installed in the WIM would do wonders for shortening considerably the time it takes me to clean install.

garlin · Aug 9, 2023

johnlgalt said:
But drivers are a PITA. I can export them in Driver Store Explorer easily enough, but not all of them are easy to figure out which device they belong to, so just being able to have them pre-installed in the WIM would do wonders for shortening considerably the time it takes me to clean install.

Instead of using DriverStore Explorer:

pnputil /export-driver * D:\Drivers
DISM /Image:C:\offline\image /Add-Driver /Driver

\Drivers /Recurse

Though DriverStore Explorer is handy for cleaning up older copies of the driver, before you perform an export.

hsehestedt said:
Thanks, John. I'll go ahead and do that - make it default to adding an ei.cfg since it I can only see it as beneficial and never hurting anything to have it there. I'll also strongly suggest accepting the default and see if I can revise the help for that topic to better explain the purpose of that file.

I can't believe how many times I've explained EI.cfg to users with BIOS license keys.

hsehestedt · Aug 9, 2023

garlin said:
I can't believe how many times I've explained EI.cfg to users with BIOS license keys.

True! I wish that Microsoft would simply change this behavior.

hsehestedt · Aug 9, 2023

johnlgalt said:
I need to sit down and take some time to get this process working with your scripts to automate it as much as possible so I can slipstream my rig's drivers into a WIM for when I want to clean install, which I can then slipstream updates to right before the clean install.

I can easily get apps installed, as I've trimmed down most of my major use apps to portable versions, so they are always there, ready to go, and the majority of what I need to carry over is browser profiles and Thunderbird profiles.

I do install quite a few apps, but they are quick to install, and copying data back to their respective locations makes sure those apps function exactly as they did before.

But drivers are a PITA. I can export them in Driver Store Explorer easily enough, but not all of them are easy to figure out which device they belong to, so just being able to have them pre-installed in the WIM would do wonders for shortening considerably the time it takes me to clean install.

I go back and forth in my feelings on this. One week I will make several separate ISO images: One that has all the drivers for for my primary laptop slipstreamed into it, another that has all the drivers for my desktop slipstreamed in, etc. Then I'll swap methods and just make separate folders for each machine with the drivers for that machine export.

But lately, I've tried something a little different...

I'll go to my desktop and export all the drivers like this:

PNPUTIL /export-driver * C:\Driver_Backup

Then, I will take that whole folder and create an ISO image from it. For example, "Desktop PC Drivers.iso". Now I have a single file that has all the drivers for that system. So, after I install Windows, I simply double-click that ISO to mount it, then point device manager to that mounted drive letter and bang, all drivers installed rapidly and easily.

This way I don't need to manage so many Windows images.

Try3 · Aug 9, 2023

hsehestedt said:
One week I will make several separate ISO images: One that has all the drivers for for my primary laptop slipstreamed into it, another that has all the drivers for my desktop slipstreamed in, etc

Hannes,

I've been following this thread because I'm interested and not because I know anything about the subject.

But isn't making your ISO with all the drivers for your laptop as well as those for your desktop viable?
- Surely it just means those drivers are available for use just like the huge pile of drivers that Windows already includes in a standard ISO?
- Surely drivers only affect hardware with the corresponding HardwareID so no harm will come to the hardware that differs between your laptop & your desktop?

Yours,
Denis

hsehestedt · Aug 10, 2023

Try3 said:
Hannes,

I've been following this thread because I'm interested and not because I know anything about the subject.

But isn't making your ISO with all the drivers for your laptop as well as those for your desktop viable?
- Surely it just means those drivers are available for use just like the huge pile of drivers that Windows already includes in a standard ISO?
- Surely drivers only affect hardware with the corresponding HardwareID so no harm will come to the hardware that differs between your laptop & your desktop?

Yours,
Denis

That's actually a really good question. I've avoided doing that for so long that I have almost forgotten why I do it that way. As I recall, yes, it will work that way. But, I think that it ends up putting all the drivers in the driver store so you can end up with gigabytes of extra drivers.

But its a good point so I will try it tomorrow (Thursday). I recall thinking that it would only put the drivers that it detected in the final Windows driver store, but that was not what happened.

I'll let you know what I find out.

hsehestedt · Aug 10, 2023

Okay, for those of you suggesting the change in behavior regarding the injection of the EI.CFG file - you win! I've been struggling with this all evening, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to simply default to including an EI.CFG. I was trying to logically think why one would NOT want to include this file. I can't think of a good reason to do this. Yes, there may be some users who legit don't know if they are running Home or Pro so automatic selection would be helpful to them. But, let's face it, those are not the people that would be running a tool like this anyway!

So, I have commented out the section of code that handles asking about the EI.CFG and just hard coded it always create that file. By doing this I can always easily reverse the behavior to the original behavior should I need to do so.

The end result is that the program will no longer even ask about this this. It will just do it.

Thanks for your suggestions!

BTW, I won't get around to updating this on GitHub until this weekend, so attached is the latest build with a couple other tweaks as well. This is mainly just a couple of typos I corrected in messages to the user.

hsehestedt · Aug 10, 2023

Try3 said:
Hannes,

I've been following this thread because I'm interested and not because I know anything about the subject.

But isn't making your ISO with all the drivers for your laptop as well as those for your desktop viable?
- Surely it just means those drivers are available for use just like the huge pile of drivers that Windows already includes in a standard ISO?
- Surely drivers only affect hardware with the corresponding HardwareID so no harm will come to the hardware that differs between your laptop & your desktop?

Yours,
Denis

Testing done...

So, my memory was correct. Here are the results:

First, I installed a clean copy of Windows to a Hyper-V VM. This is an install of Windows from a plain Windows installation disk without any added drivers. After the installation, I run Driver Store Explorer on the system. The size of all drivers shows up as 42 KB.

Next, I modify the Windows installation media by adding the drivers for 3 systems to it. Once again, I install Windows. After this installation, Driver Store Explorer shows 7.7 GB of drivers.

In driver explorer, I choose "Select Old Drivers" and delete those drivers. That bring me down to 4.3 GB of drivers.
Finally, I select ALL drivers and choose to delete them. Note that I do NOT choose the option to force deletion. In theory, this should leave drivers that are in use. This takes me down to 70 MB of installed drivers.

Conclusion

So, adding drivers for multiple systems ends up creating a really big driver store which includes drivers for other systems than the one Windows was installed on.

You can significantly clean this up using Driver Store Explorer.

Here is my big concern: Using the option to delete all drivers seems to work most of the time, but I have had the one or another instance where a needed driver was removed even though I am not forcing driver deletion. So, it's okay, but not stone cold reliable.

johnlgalt · Aug 10, 2023

Since I only have the one rig running Windows, I won't have issues with drivers for multiple machines bloating my driver store.

As for DSE - yeah, my system installs numerous Bluetooth files, and when clicking select old drivers, DSE always selects several of the files with the same name and current version, but different file sizes:

One in green is fine to remove. It's been updated (probably by Windows Update, or by me manually).

Ones in red should not be removed, but DSE always suggest them.

johnlgalt · Aug 10, 2023

garlin said:
Instead of using DriverStore Explorer:

pnputil /export-driver * D:\Drivers
DISM /Image:C:\offline\image /Add-Driver /Driver\Drivers /Recurse

Though DriverStore Explorer is handy for cleaning up older copies of the driver, before you perform an export.

I can't believe how many times I've explained EI.cfg to users with BIOS license keys.

Fantastic. Giving that a go today.

johnlgalt · Aug 10, 2023

DSE and pnputil output the same stuff, mostly.

The file size is a bit different - and here is why.

For every discrepancy, in the respective folders of the same drivers in both stores, DSE has added a .PNF file:

All the .PNF files are extremely recent, which makes sense, as my system is, technically, not even 6 days old yet.

So, 6 to 1 and half dozen to the other.

hsehestedt · Aug 10, 2023

Less than six days old? Nice! My new laptop is only slightly newer. It died on day six of ownership and Lenovo had to send me a replacement. That took almost a month.

But I think I have finally gotten through the "getting to know you" phase. I'm using PNPUTIL to make a backup copy of all the drivers. Then I did a clean and restored those. That worked perfectly! Then, for the first time ever on this system, I wrote a little script that installs all the Lenovo Microsoft Store apps using winget. So my recovery plan is pretty much in place now.

The only other thing that took me a while was getting to know all the ins and outs of Modern Standby. It's my first system with that feature. So far, I'm loving it!

garlin · Aug 10, 2023

Your next journey is to use DriverPaths in the unattended file. Then WinPE can dynamically scan a local USB folder for drivers as-needed.
That's how the enterprise folks get it done.

Code:

    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE" 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">
      <DriverPaths>
        <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="1" wcm:action="add">
          <Path>C:\Drivers</Path>
        </PathAndCredentials>
      </DriverPaths>
        <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="2" wcm:action="add">
          <Path>D:\Drivers</Path>
        </PathAndCredentials>
      </DriverPaths>
        <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="3" wcm:action="add">
          <Path>E:\Drivers</Path>
        </PathAndCredentials>
      </DriverPaths>
    </component>

hsehestedt · Aug 10, 2023

garlin said:

Your next journey is to use DriverPaths in the unattended file. Then WinPE can dynamically scan a local USB folder for drivers as-needed.
That's how the enterprise folks get it done.

Code:

    <component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE" 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">
      <DriverPaths>
        <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="1" wcm:action="add">
          <Path>C:\Drivers</Path>
        </PathAndCredentials>
      </DriverPaths>
        <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="2" wcm:action="add">
          <Path>D:\Drivers</Path>
        </PathAndCredentials>
      </DriverPaths>
        <PathAndCredentials wcm:keyValue="3" wcm:action="add">
          <Path>E:\Drivers</Path>
        </PathAndCredentials>
      </DriverPaths>
    </component>

Thanks for that. Do you have any good resources for all this information? I'd love to know where the "enterprise folks" learn all these details.

Sometimes it takes me crazy amounts of time and research just to make small gains.

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