One autounattend for multiple editions of Win 11?

P

preiner

New Member
Is it possible for setup to NOT format drive is it is upgrading over Win 10 but it WILL format/partition the drive if setup launched at boot?

That is, when setup.exe is launched from windows explorer, autounattend skips the drive layout step and applies all other settings

When setup is launched at ISO boot, it part/formats drive EVEN IF existing layout is present
 
At boot time I would like to be prompted for edition selection and then have rest of the setup automatic using generic trial keys.

I currently have ntlite creating customized wims for home and pro on 1 iso and i have the select edition flag checked in autounattend.

Where is stumble is on product key. It appears you can only include one. I chose home trial key. As expected automated home install runs fine.

However if I choose pro, I get error 8030003b in setup log reporting error in specialize phase.

I would like to choose "skip key entry" and have setup continue. Ive seen this choice in the GUI when prompted for key.

The choice is probably buried somewhere but I can find it.
 
For the question on disk partitioning, I assume you're asking about in-place upgrades? Setup won't repartition your system, since in-place upgrades require it to save the old version of Windows if you need to revert. If Setup wiped the disk, that would be impossible.

You can't have autounattend.xml with multiple product keys. Either you script a custom WinPE wrapper for Setup, or embed a local unattend.xml (with matching keys) inside each separate edition. The local unattend is more work depending on how many editions you need.

crypticus has more experience on setting up images this way.
https://www.ntlite.com/community/in...edition-when-creating-an-unattended-iso.1124/
 
Custom PE wrapper or similar is a bit intriguing. Ive never seen it done.

Would it be possible then to boot PE and get to a desktop (whether ms explorer or 3rd party) where you could choose to do one of the following?

1) Run recovery to repair damaged install (i think this is winre.wim. never understood if this is just a pe app or similar)

2) Run windows setup (not in upgrade mode) but to do a fresh install? (I have no idea how boot.wim is different than pe.wim. again is running setup from PE identical to booting from windows setup cd?)

3) Launch Macrium or Acronis restore. (I struggle with this option because when I let macrium create a PE image, it force launches macrium. I dont get a generic desktop to do other things. I always wished it would integrate into an existing PE image without making macrium the only thing i could run)

Sort of a mini all-in-one windows iso
 
That's moving outside of NTLite territory (custom WinPE launchers), but you can still use NTLite to prepare the install images.

WinPE tweakers who have done similar projects can be found -> https://theoven.org/
You would replace the normal boot.wim with a tweaked image file, before making the ISO. Beyond that, you'll have to experiment on your own.
 
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