MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

thomasgud — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:52:30 GMT

Great work Mike. What build is this? I have not seen this graphic with my 7100 build.

Regards, Thomas

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:05:08 GMT

This is with MDT 2010 Beta 2 (build 5.0.1210.0), which works with Windows 7 RC (build 7100).

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

M4g3 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:05:18 GMT

I was wondering where did the shell go. Is there a way to completely block access to that shell?. For debugging it is great but for final deployment it poses a security risk (i.e. info such as passwds, keys and other sensitive information stored in unattend.xml could be obtained through it).

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:32:40 GMT

You can turn off the F8 prompt by editing the winpeshl.ini file in the "Templates" directory. Right now it says "/bootstrap"; change it to instead say "/bootstrapNoSF8".

-Michael

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

M4g3 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:20:15 GMT

Thanks Michael. Is there a way to alter the default failure behaviour of WinPE? Atm it displays a Wizard error message, dumps the Logs to a share and exits to a shell. What i would like to have is no Wizard error message, no shell just dump the Logs and reboot. Is this possible?

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

M4g3 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:40:24 GMT

Hmm actually what i would like to have is Wiard error message, logs dumped onto the share and then reboot (no shell). Is this possible? Also what is the best place to submit feture requests and bug reports for MDT 2010 Beta 2

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:38:11 GMT

Not without modifying the LiteTouch.wsf script. Right now, we will always display the wizard if an error occurs, and the machine won't reboot (it will just open a command prompt) if the process doesn't complete with a return code of 0.

So the changes would have to reset the return code to 0 before it gets to the summary wizard display (so that SkipFinalSummary=YES works).

-Michael

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

M4g3 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:44:22 GMT

Thx again :). I have noticed more actions are availble throught the database section including FinishAction option. I have set it to REBOOT but it seems that the process does not restart at the end of the sequence. Also i have been fighting with MININT folders and Sysprep folders being left behind containing unattend.txt and sysprep.inf (in XP case). The Logs say that the tas sequence completed successfully. I have tries invoking LTICleanup explicitly but that caused more problms. I use only LiteTouch (no sms, configmgr, etc). My workaround was to add a custom task at the end of the sequence that waits fot the TS process to finish, then removes MININT and sysprep folders and restarts the machine. However it would be grand to achieve that within the task sequence (i.e. full cleanup and reboot with FinishAction). How can i acheve that? Am i missing something?

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

M4g3 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:42:48 GMT

Oki doki the FinishAction is working now although i had to add it to CustomSettings.ini (besides the entry in the database). However the completion of the TS sequence does not clean up MININT and sysprep folders. Do i have to explility invoke LTICleanup.wsf or is there another way?

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:58:40 GMT

What was left in the MININT folder?

We wouldn't normally clean up the sysprep folder - that's something the OS should take care of doing.

-Michael

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

M4g3 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:51:45 GMT

MININT contains unattend.xml, unattend.xml.bak (unattend.txt in canse of XP) with plain text passwords and other sensitive info + some TS related dlls in a TOOLS/X64 subfolder.

As for sysprep folder if no capture is specified should this file/folder exist?

Cheers

Lukas

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

NathanR — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:11:47 GMT

So is there a way of showing the cmd prompt now? I'm trying to debug a capture image issue (image capture fails at about the 1.4Gb mark, wim gets deleted and rc = 2 is returned). I was hoping to use /debug:true in the unattend.xml file in PE to trace what's happening but 2010 B2 doesnt' show it (which is otherwise a great change).

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:44:39 GMT

Yes, press the F8 key.

-Michael

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

NathanR — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 06:28:16 GMT

Sorry, I meant to show the cmd that executes the wpeinit.exe app. Apols for the badly explained question.

Didn't need to use the /debug:true switch after all. Found the ztibackup_imagex.log and found that I was running out of space on the source HDD. Ended up finding the issue in the MS KB.

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

wvanhiele — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:06:35 GMT

Hi,

I just noticed the "Run the Recovery Wizard" option in your winPE. How can i do that? Is it a custom created option?

Thanks

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:12:52 GMT

It's not a custom option - it's built into the Windows 7 boot.wim. So to get that to show up, we start with the Windows 7 boot.wim instead of the winpe.wim from Windows AIK. (The Windows RE component isn't available in Windows AIK for compliance reasons.)

-Michael

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

jsekel — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:49:16 GMT

Michael,

We have successfully moved from BDD to MDT 2010 except for one little niggle, the welcome screen (same as shown in this post)! We can't seem to get it to stop showing up. We have added skipbddwelcome to bootstrap.xml and custom.xml and even tried skipwizard too. Once we click run it never prompts us again and installs perfectly but this little screen won't go away. Can you point me in the right direction?

Thank you,

Josh

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

mniehaus — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:17:17 GMT

You need to generate new boot images once you change the bootstrap.ini to add the SkipBDDWelcome parameter. (You can import the new WIM into WDS, or burn a new ISO to CD.)

-Michael

re: MDT 2010 New Feature #8: No more visible command windows when booting Lite Touch Windows PE

jsekel — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:08:05 GMT

Duh!, we forgot to move the rebuilt image over to WDS.

Thank you!