@lucamathuse Hi. I have faced similar situation on HP. I think your computers are going into recovery because the BIOS hasn’t updated its boot entries. So it still thinks it should load the old OS.

From the steps, I saw you fiddling with the Boot entries. I’m not familiar with that method, but at least on my computers, I don’t need to change anything. Just a sysprep -> Shutdown and capture.

Have you actually tried investigating whether the data has been copied to your disk? Do you see the boot directory? You should be able to drop into the CMD from that recovery or advanced option and investigate that.

I have deployed Windows 11 while the image type was Windows 10, and never needed to change anything.

@lucamathuse
I don’t remember if it’s related to Win11 we have this in our postdownload script :

if [ -n "$hd" ]; then if [ "$hd" = "/dev/nvme0n1" ] ; then partsys=$hd'p2' partdata=$hd'p3' else partsys=$hd'2' partdata=$hd'3' fi

We use Virtualbox, install classic WIndows 11, disable Bitlocker, and capture with FOG with image set to “Multiple Partition Image - All Disks”
My folder capture :

d1.mbr d1p1.img d1p2.img d1p3.img d1p4.img d1.partitions d1.size

Maybe try capture debug to see which partition FOG get during your capture

Yes, you are right!
I can confirm that it is still functional.
Install clean Windows 11 + drivers + all the updates -> configure windows as you like it -> sysprep -> shutdown -> Image -> Deploy.

Although, I have searched the answer for the main question, to sysprep or not, for years!
What I mean, is that if you sysprep, some of the Windows settings and configuration will be wiped out during the sysprep, so you cannot configure image 100% ready and need some manual steps after the cloned pc (deployed) boots up.
Of course those manual configurations can be automated (by a script or some other way), but still, it would be nice that image can be setup without sysprepping if it is not needed anymore in Win10/11.

I have tested hundreds of PC-s in domain environment without sysprepping - they work flawlessly, no issues with Domain, WSUS or other things, but I am little bit worried, that if some issues arise, e.g some weird errors then I must reinstall all the deployed pc-s with sysprepped images…

Can somebody confirm?

Yes, I understand, that without sysprep, all the PC-s deployed from the same image will be using same SID, but is it bad somehow?
Can someone confirm that for Intune it is also OK?
Domain doesn’t care, WSUS either, but what else might break?

Hi Again guys

I have some news about this problem.
I found a work around.

I change the file d1.fixed_size_partitions deleting the recovery Windows partition. This change generated and error when I made the deploy image in Client PC.
But if I cancel the job in the CLI fog server and reset the client machine after fog show the error
It boot ok.

I’ll continue reading …
Thanks

@Sebastian-Roth while poking round in the BIOS on some new Dell machines I did find an option called “Force PXE on next Boot” - https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-uk/dell-cmnd-config-v3.0/dell_command_configure_cli-v3/-forcepxeonnextboot?guid=guid-85c17652-4a18-4538-8665-e6b3e777d649&lang=en-us

You have to have the dell tools installed, but this would be a possible option.

I know with my current machines when a BIOS update happens it keeps overwriting the boot order so my PXE boot doesn’t happen. Quite annoying!

I don’t know how I’d go about making the FOG Client execute this command before a task reboot though.

Hi

In fact, I really want to use those third party package because they do things very well
My snapin configuration are not tied to a specific version of a package, it’s the upstream repo who take care of that

But I have found how to install my install.bat file

Here is the solution

Snapin Name: 7zip Snapin Description: Installation de 7zip Snapin Type: Snapin Pack Template Snapin Pack Template : PowerShell x64 script Snapin Pack File: "%SYSTEMROOT%\sysnative\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe" # autofilled Snapin Pack Arguments: -ExecutionPolicy Bypass Set-Location "$env:ProgramFiles\FOG\tmp\7zip"; & ".\install.bat" Snapin File (exists): 7-Zip_25.01-1_x64.zip Snapin Enabled : x Snapin Arguments Hidden: Snapin Timeout (seconds): 0 Replicate?: x Reboot after install: Shutdown after install: Snapin Command read-only: "%SYSTEMROOT%\sysnative\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -ExecutionPolicy Bypass Set-Location "$env:ProgramFiles\FOG\tmp\7zip"; & ".\install.bat" # autofilled

It works like a charm

Maybe it should go in FOG documentation as an example

The third party repo I mentioned is there https://gricad-gitlab.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/legi/soft/trokata/winsoft-main/

LEGI is a French research lab, and the repo is under MIT Licence. I am not the owner, but it’s a great work. I will explain more about that later.

@BrightPipe Can you post the snapin?

This isn’t something FOG is doing, though you already suspect that as well.

So seeing the snapin file, I’m guessing it’s using some method that’s effectively saying “set all the things” and the snapin is set to only set “specific” things.

Since the action is effectively “setting all the things” it’s resetting the other things you didn’t intend.

Seeing the snapin and the actions involved will be most beneficial at least to understand what’s happening. We may not be able to fix the issue but at least we could all better understand the problem and maybe think of ways to troubleshoot and hopefully narrow down whats wrong.

At cursory glance, it feels like the snapin is misconfigured in someway. Thought you did say it worked in Windows 10, but not in Windows 11, so it’s also just as possible there’s some functional difference that needs to be adjusted for in the Windows 11 side of things.

@gaptoothgonni Well darn, have you tried booting with snponly.efi instead of ipxe.efi? It wouldn’t make a ton of sense if that worked but something else to try.
If it’s booting to the wim though, it should just be getting the drivers from the wim unless ipxe somehow changes how they’re presented, which I don’t think it does but that’s also the only difference between where it’s working. Might be worth looking at https://github.com/ipxe/ipxe/discussions and seeing if anyone has had similar issues. Since you’re just using FOG to create the ipxe boot menu, it’s not likely anything within FOG that’s causing this. You could try ipxe’s pre-built boot files, though they won’t have the embedded fog stuff https://boot.ipxe.org/ but maybe will make a difference. There’s other ipxe efi files you can try too, or try an older one ( I think we still include some legacy ones in /tftpboot)

@george1421 So removing my key from the unattend file fixed the SetupComplete.cmd running issue. I forgot to tell it to join the domain after deploy and made a snap in for that which worked to test it out (I could tell the service was running because it rebooted to change its name as well but wanted to verify with the snap in). Windows must have activated based on something in the hardware because the machine is activated as well, so the key didn’t really need to be there I guess(?)

Also thanks for all your help, several years ago under another username you helped me a lot with random issues on another fog set up. The whole FOG project team is amazing!

@Almeida BitLocker is enabled in your master ? If yes, you should disable it. Enable it only on the final computer.

We do have the BCD issue when enabling BitLocker on 24h2 image, we are running the same commands, but you are missing one.

You need to set device partition=C: for the recover from hibernate entry too. The annoying part is that its ID is dynamic.

@george1421 Thanks for the insight!

I’ve tried adding Dell’s WinPE driver package to the driver store but it doesn’t seem to have helped either. Whether it’s just the wrong drivers for the specific machine, i’m not sure yet.

I’ll give it another go once we get some more Dell stock in - but thank you for the help in the meantime 🙂

Nevermind, looks like it was an error in the script itself.

I just want to know if it is possible. Seems like it should be, but I am having difficulty finding any information online regarding how to actually do it.