"Setup has failed to initialize the working directory"

D

David Gardner

New Member
I am working from the latest Win10 x64 Enterprise VLC ISO from MS (SW_DVD9_Win_Pro_10_1709.1_64BIT_English_Pro_Ent_EDU_N_MLF_X21-67518). I don't have access to the VLC myself and requested the pure Enterprise ISO, but this was all that was found and provided to me. The 1703 ISO I have is pure Enterprise and I do not have this problem with it.

I am essentially removing some Store apps, OneDrive, adding drivers, current Windows Updates applicable to 1709 and removing non-essential editions. When running setup from the modified source, I get this error:

1517955530846.png

If I don't remove the extraneous editions, the setup will hang prompting for an edition when I try to run it unattended (runs silently under the system account, setupprep, setuphost, and setup process show with no activity), which I need for my management tool. I am running NTLite 1.5.0.5955. I've attached my presets and log. Any idea why this is happening?
 

Attachments

  • Auto-saved session {C85C1C5B-EE2D-4E75-81F7-2605FF8C157A}.xml
    5.8 KB
  • NTLite.log
    14.6 KB
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I ran this from Windows. The majority of what this will be used for is for upgrading, both Win7 and Win10 1703/1607 clients. I haven't run this as a bare metal install yet, but I will do that.
 
I just tested loading the NTLite created ISO as a DVD in VMWare and it installs a bare metal machine fine.

The vast majority of what I need this for is to push the setup behind the scenes with my management tool on a running operating system. The issue appears to be from all the extra editions in the original MS ISO. Is there a single edition ISO available from MS that I can get my hands on?

If not, I need to be able to get this to work correctly.
 
Tried mucking with the EI.cfg and PID.txt files in the \sources folder to specify [EditionID] to be Enterprise and put our MAK key in the PID file. It seems that setup will look to the embedded OEM key and choose to install Pro. On machines that don't have an embedded key, it is failing to validate either the KMS or MAK keys.

Looks like I still need a way to safely remove the extraneous editions with NTLite. Any suggestions?
 
You can remove unwanted editions in 2 ways. On the Source page, right click the edition you want to keep and Export. On the Apply page you can remove unwanted editions, left hand side of the main pane, just untick them.
 
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Yes, I have tried removing editions both ways, but both ways still leave me with the problem described in my original post.
 
@David Gardner, sorry for the delay.

The latest versions do not remove Boot.wim WinPE edition when you select Save and trim, that should help with the setup.exe issue.
So make sure boot.wim is having 2 editions, Win10 setup.exe started requiring that recently.
Also check your free space, more info here.

As for auto-edition selection, you can type in the KMS generic product key in the Product Key (Setup) field on the Unattended page.

Let me know if that helped, thanks.
 
@nuhi Thanks for the info. I worked with MS support yesterday and he told me to use the PID.txt with the generic key without the EI.cfg file in the sources directory. That seems to be moving things along in the limited testing I've done on it. I will be testing this further and post back if I find contrary results.
 
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