Detected unsupported Windows version

[RussF]

I've been working on a win 10 Pro 22H2 build. I had to set it aside for a couple of weeks due to other pressures. I decided to get back to work on it today. When I launched NTLite (licensed), there was an update available, so I took it.

The build I was working on was an ISO expanded into its own folder, not using the cache. The build was still mounted, but the status said "Invalid | Refresh when available". I've never seen that before, but Refresh doesn't change the status.

When I tried to load the build, I got:

View attachment 12696

The only change since I last worked on it (8/8/24) was the update. Could that be it and can I downgrade, or do I have to start from scratch?

Russ

 

[garlin]

That suggests the image may be corrupted. Since you have a few presets, I would unload the image, have NTLite forget the ISO folder, delete the folder and start over again. Often it's better restarting from a clean ISO than trying to guess what happened to the image.

If you forgot which preset was the latest, I would open "C:\Program Files\NTLite\Presets" in Explorer, and sort by date.

 

[RussF]

That's a little disconcerting, since nothing in that image/folder has been touched since it worked fine on the 8th. Sigh. Well, I'll give that a try and see what happens.

Russ

 

[garlin]

It might have been corrupted at the time it was last updated. I've never seen NTLite report "unsupported Windows version" on a normal release, so that's a rare event.

 

[nuhi]

Also the red X icon on the left of the edition indicates an invalid/corrupted image.
Best (and only option) is to unload it and start over from the original ISO, and use the preset to load last settings.
It could also be that install.wim was moved since mounted.

 

[RussF]

Thank you garlin and nuhi. I think I've figured out what I did.

I unloaded the mounted image and rather than start from absolute scratch, I thought I would try by remounting the same folder. No red x on the edition - good sign. The edition loaded just fine - another good sign. Upon loading the preset, I was presented with a couple of errors that some registry scripts couldn't be found. AHA! It all came back to me. Since I plan on copying those target scripts into the $OEM$\$1 folder, I wanted to organize the folder structure better. I guess I did this while the image was mounted, it got confused.

So, while it is true that I didn't make any changes to the image folder itself, I DID, however, change the location of a couple of source files elsewhere. Doh.

While I have you, I just want to clarify something. As I said, I plan on copying things into the $OEM$ folders in the Windows\Sources folders of my image. These will include the suite of applications I want to preinstall (Chrome, VLC, IrfanView, etc). Some of these are .MSIs and some are .EXEs, but all have silent install arguments that I have tested. It is my understanding that these folders get copied to the target PC before any Post-Setup actions are taken. My thought was to place a task for each of these into the "Before logon" section as a command.

For MSIs, the command would be "msiexec" and the arguments would be the msi file located in the folders that were copied earlier with their respective arguments, i.e. "/i C:\Utils\Chrome_enterprise\googlechromestandaloneenterprise64.msi /qn" (without the quotes, of course).

For EXEs, the command would be "C:\Utils\NotepadPlusPlus\npp.8.6.9.Installer.x64.exe" and the parameters would be "/S"

Again, these would all be executed from the target's C: drive, NOT from the machine I'm using to create the ISO, as a "Run" command would.

Hope that wasn't too confusing. This should work, correct?

Thanks again for your help,

Russ

 

[garlin]

WinPE Setup checks for an $OEM$ folder in the install media. After Setup is done applying (extracting) the install image, it begins copying $OEM$ folders to the system disk. This makes those files immediately available to later install passes.

When you use Post-Setup to add individual files, NTLite stages them in two ways:

1. Added Files are first staged to "\sources\$OEM$\$$\Setup\Files" (Before logon), or "\sources\$OEM$\$$\Setup\FilesU" (After logon) in the extracted ISO folder. While you could manually create those folders and copy files yourself, NTLite doesn't have any visibility of your changes.

2. WinPE Setup extracts the $OEM$ folders, and remaps "$OEM$\$$\Setup" to "C:\Windows\Setup".

3. Executable files (.exe, .bat, .cmd, .ps1) added by (Before logon), are called from a SetupComplete.cmd wrapper script. Any parameters you provided are appended to the command line. Files added by(After logon) don't go into a single script, but are scheduled as set of RunOnce tasks installed in the registry.

4. NTLite understand several file types, and will implicitly execute them as:

.bat, .cmd	cmd /c [staged path to file] [parameters]
.ps1	powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass [staged path to file] [parameters]
.msi	msiexec [staged path to file] [parameters]
.reg	reg import [staged path to file]

Normally you simply Add / File, and then provide the (optional) Parameters. NTLite will keep track of the rest.