KanduIT.co.

uk
Kandu Education Limited The Deep Business Centre, Tower St, Hull HU1 4BG 0845 519 3129/01482 839163

TASK Creating a WINDOWS 10 ANSWER FILE

Installing Microsoft Windows on a standalone system is now a quick and easy process, with minimal input required from
the user.

However, there are several stages if the installation where user input is needed, such as Language Selection, Disk Layout
and the final stage of the installation which is known as the OOBE (Out of Box Experience).

If we needed to install Windows on lots of systems, this would become time consuming and labour intensive, as such
organisations which would need to do this (such as a PC manufacturer) can use an Answer File to allow for an Unattended
Installation.

Page 1 of 40
Scenario:

You have been asked to create an Answer File which can be used to automate the Windows 10 installation of a Virtualized
Machine

If you would like to do this via the JBC assessment platform, contact your tutor for more details and specific
instructions.

Video:

For those using the assessment platform, we have included a 'Tutor Walkthrough' of the challenge to help you adapt the
instructions. These are not designed to be instructional videos but are more reference material which will help you get
started.

You should collect screenshots here as they will count towards your assessment portfolio, the screenshots should be
pasted into a Word Document named 'Windows Deployment', your tutor will advise on this further.

Example Screenshots:

A document is available in the learning interface with some example screenshots which would cover the following
Assessment Criteria.

Unit 633 Assessment Criteria:

1.3 Prepare a computer for Windows installation.

1.4 Install the Windows operating system.
1.5 automate the installation of an operating system.
12.2 create virtual machines.
12.4 manage virtual hard disks.

Page 2 of 40
1. Connect to the AZURE ASSESSMENT PLATFORM.

Contact your tutor if the link and login details have not been provided.

2. Check that the WINDOWS 10 ASSESSMENT AND DEPLOYMENT KIT (ADK) is installed.

HOW:

a) Click START, then scroll down and check for WINDOWS KITS.

If this has not been pre-installed, please contact your tutor.

3. MOUNT the WINDOWS 10 ISO file.

HOW:

a) On the DESKTOP of the remote computer, click to OPEN the folder named ISO FILES.
b) Locate the WINDOWS10-en-GB ISO FILE and RIGHT CLICK.

Page 3 of 40
c) select MOUNT from the dropdown menu.

The ISO file is now mounted and appears to the operating system as an optical drive

d) OPEN the SOURCES FOLDER

Page 4 of 40
e) Locate the file named INSTALL.WIM

f) Then RIGHT-CLICK to COPY the file

Page 5 of 40
g) CREATE a NEW FOLDER in side of the ISO FILES folder found on the DESKTOP. Give this a name of your
WinIMage.

h) PASTE the file into the newly created folder.

Page 6 of 40
4. OPEN WINDOWS ADK and SELECT the WINDOWS IMAGE

HOW:

a) From START scroll down until you find WINDOWS KITS

Page 7 of 40
b) Select WINDOWS SYSTEM IMAGE MANAGER

c) From the WSIM menu choose SELECT WINDOWS IMAGE

Page 8 of 40
d) Select the INSTALL.WIM from the new folder you created earlier and click OPEN
e) Click YES when prompted with

The catalogue file will take a few minutes to generate.

Once complete the Windows Image will appear

5. Create the ANSWER FILE

HOW:

a) RIGHT CLICK ‘SELECT DISTRIBUTION SHARE’ and choose ‘CREATE DISTRIBUTION SHARE’

b) You will be prompted to provide a FOLDER NAME, enter ‘Windows

10 UK’

And the new distribution share will be added

Page 9 of 40
c) From FILE select NEW ANSWER FILE

An empty ANSWER FILE TEMPLATE will then appear in

the ANSWER FILE WINDOW.

d) In the WINDOWS IMAGE windows EXPAND

‘COMPONENTS’

e) Scroll down and EXPAND ‘amd64_Microsoft-

Windows-International-Core-WinPE_10.0.19041.1_neutral’

Page 10 of 40
f) Right click SetupUILanguage and choose ‘Add setting to Pass 1 windowsPE’ from the menu.

Notice that this component has now appeared in the answer file window.

Page 11 of 40
This component sets the language settings for the installation interface, this is normally the first question asked to the
user during the Windows setup process.

a) In the ANSWER FILE WINDOW, click once to SELECT ‘amd64_Microsoft-Windows-International-

Core-WinPE_10.0.19041.1_neutral’

g) Over to the right we see the ‘SETTINGS’ which are available for configuration. As this is a UK
INSTALLATION, fill out this section exact as seen below

h) Back in the ANSWER FILE window, select ‘SetupUILanguage’ and in the SETTINGS section again enter
en-GB as the UILanguage.

NOTE: The WINDOWS ISO FILE provided is only suitable for en-GB (UK) installations. If another Language is
required different ISO’s are available from MICROSOFT and for multi-language support Language Packs can be
added.

Page 12 of 40
i) Over in the WINDOWS IMAGE window, scroll down and expand amd64_Microsoft-Windows-
Setup_10.0.19041.1_neutral

j) Then expand the DISK CONFIGURATION component

k) RIGHT CLICK ‘Disk’ and ‘Add Setting to Pass 1 windowsPE’

Page 13 of 40
The DISK COMPONENT is now added to the ANSWER FILE

We are now going to configure the DISK LAYOUT, PARTITIONS and installation location. These are again points
where the user is usually stopped during the installation. As we are going to be deploying this as a VIRTUAL
MACHINE, we will be creating an MBR (legacy) layout. If the deployment was to be used on a physical system with a
GPT partition table then a minimum of 4 partitions would be needed.

l) In the ANSWER FILE WINDOW, select the DISKCONFIGURATION COMPONENT and change the
‘WillShowUI’ value to OnError

This instructs the installation not to prompt the user at this stage unless there is an error. If this value is left blank the
installation will stop and ask for the disk layout to be confirmed.

m) Select DISK

Page 14 of 40
n) Then fill out the following settings

DISK ID = 0 means that this will apply to the first (or only) disk in the system. WillWipeDisk will instruct setup to
wipe the disk regardless of its contents.

o) In the ANSWER FILE WINDOW, EXPAND the DISK component, then right click ‘Insert New CreatePartition’

p) Repeat this process to create a second

PARTITION.

Page 15 of 40
q) Select the FIRST PARTITION and fill out the details in the following way

This is going to be our SYSTEM PARTITION. A SYSTEM PARTITION is a small logical area of the disk which
contains hardware-specific files and boot information, it is not designed to be used by the computer user, hence the
name ‘system partition’.

The value ‘EXTEND’ is asking whether the partition should be extended to fill the entire drive. In this case we only
require a small partition so the answer is ‘FALSE’. This will be the first partition on the disk, so the ORDER is number
1. The size will be 500 MB. And this will be a PRIMARY PARTITION.

r) Select the 2nd ‘Create Partition’ component and this time provide the following values.

This will be the partition on to which the OPERATING SYSTEM will be installed. We would like this to fill the rest of
the disk which is left over after the system partition has been created, as such the ‘EXTEND’ value is TRUE.

This is the second partition to be added to the disk so the ORDER value is 2. And again, the TYPE is PRIMARY.

Page 16 of 40
s) In the ANSWER FILE WINDOW, RIGHT CLICK ‘ModifyPartitions’.

t) Select ‘Insert New Modify Partition’

u) Repeat this action to create a second Modify PARTITION

Page 17 of 40
v) Fill out the following
details for the SYSTEM
PARTITION

As this partition contains BOOT INFORMATION, this will be our ACTIVE PARTITION. The NTFS FILE SYSTEM is
to be used. And these instructions are assigned to the correct PARTITION using the ID and order numbers of 1.

w) For the second

PARTITION, add
the following values

x) In the Windows image Window, EXPAND ‘ImageInstall’

Page 18 of 40
y) Then OSImage

z) Right Click InstallTo and then ‘Add Setting to Pass 1 windowsPE’

aa) Add the following settings for the

‘InstallTo’ component.

This confirms that Windows shall be

installed on the partition with the ID
value 2 of DISK 0.

Page 19 of 40
bb) Next expand UserData

cc) And ADD the PRODUCTKEY component TO PASS 1 of the Answer File

Page 20 of 40
dd) Select the UserData component.

Add the value ‘true’ to AcceptEula (End user

License Agreement) and an organisation name of
your choice.

ee) Select ProductKey

Here a KEY will often be entered which applies to the

whole organisation as part of a volume licensing
agreement, we can also enter a generic key here, in this
example use.

VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T

Page 21 of 40
“Pass 1” contains all of the essential information required for the installation. We are now going to move forward to
“Pass 4 Specialize”. At Pass 4 we can start to add in specific information which relates to the organisation. For
example, a large manufacture such as DELL will enter information such as model numbers, logo’s and support details
in Pass 4.

ff) In the WINDOWS IMAGE

WINDOWS, select
amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-
Setup_10.0.19041.746_netral

gg) Right Click OEMInformation and

choose ‘Add Setting to Pass 4
Specialize’.

Page 22 of 40
hh) In the ANSWER FILE WINDOW, select ‘amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral’.

Fill out the properties as shown here:

Notice TimeZone is left BLANK. This value can be changed to suit whichever timezone you are working in,
however when left blank this will default to the time zone associated with the KEYBOARD layout selected earlier.

ii) Select OEMInformation

Page 23 of 40
jj) And set the following properties, MODEL and MANUFACTURER can be any values of your choosing.

Many system builders would leave the answer file here. This would install WINDOWS and the SYSTEM would be
at a stage where the customer could then create their own USER ACCOUNTS, set their own PASSWORDS etc.

This stage of the installation is Pass 7 Out-Of-Box-Experience (OOBE).

To provide a complete unattended installation we will create a DEFAULT USER.

kk) In the WINDOWS IMAGE WINDOW, find ‘amd64_Microsoft-Windows-International-

Core_10.0.19041.1_neutral’

ll) Then RIGHT CLICK and ‘Add setting to Pass 7 oobeSystem’.

Page 24 of 40
kk) Find and Expand ‘amd64_Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_10.0.19041.746_neutral’

ll) RIGHT CLICK OOBE and also add to Pass 7

Page 25 of 40
mm) Still working in the WINDOWS IMAGE Window, EXPAND ‘UserAccounts’.

nn) Add ‘LocalAccounts’ to Pass 7

Page 26 of 40
oo) In the ANSWER FILE WINDOW select amd64_Microsoft-Windows-International-Core_neutral

And fill out the properties as shown below.

These settings assure that the user of the computer will be using UK REGIONAL SETTINGS and KEYBOARD
LAYOUT.

Page 27 of 40
pp) Select the OOBE component

And fill out the following properties.

Page 28 of 40
qq) Select LocalAccounts

rr) And add a user with a NAME of your choice who is a member of the ADMINISTRATORS GROUP.

Page 29 of 40
ss) Expand the NEW LocalAccount component in the ANSWER FILE WINDOW

And create a PASSWORD of your choice.

Although the PASSWORD is currently in plain text, this will be ENCRYPTED in the final XML file.

The ANSWER FILE is now complete, we now just need to remove any UNUSED COMPONENTS. These are
easily identified as they are a light purple in colour, here we just need to REMOVE the
VMModeOptimization component, which is a SUB-COMPONENT of OOBE.

Page 30 of 40
tt) From TOOLS select VALIDATE ANSWER FILE

Page 31 of 40
If there are no errors this should be confirmed in the Messages Window

Finally, we just need to Save the answer file

uu) From FILE Select SAVE ANSWER FILE AS

vv) SAVE the ANSWER FILE to a suitable location using the name autounattend.xml

Page 32 of 40
If we open the answer file in notepad, we can see that it is a fairly short XML file. If we needed to tweak any of the
settings we can do this directly with a text editor. For example, if we decide to change the name of the default user
account we can just find that value in the XML file, change and save.

We do not need to run through the entire process of creating the file again. An organisation may have several slightly
different versions of the file to cater for different models of computer.

We now need to add the image file to an ISO image which will be used to create a virtual machine.

There are many different ways of doing this, here we will use a free application called AnyBurn to edit our original ISO
file.

Page 33 of 40
6. Add the ANSWER FILE to the installation ISO.

HOW:
a) Double click the ANYBURN SHORTCUT from the DESKTOP.

b) Click EDIT IMAGE FILE

c) Click the WINDOWS 10 ISO file, then OPEN.

Page 34 of 40
d) D) Click NEXT

e) Click ADD

Page 35 of 40
f) Find and select the XML answer file.

g) Click NEXT.

Page 36 of 40
h) To preserve the original ISO, add the word ‘Auto’ to the front of the filename, then click CREATE NOW

The process will take a few minutes to complete, when done click EXIT.

Check the ISO Files folder and you will see the new ‘Auto Windows-10-en-GB ISO File’.

7. Setup the VIRTUAL MACHINE

HOW:
a) Open HYPER-V MANAGER

Page 37 of 40
b) Create a NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE.

c) When naming the new VM, make sure to include your own name to help authenticate the screenshots.

d) Choose DEFAULT SETTINGS for GENERATION and MEMORY, then for NETWORKING connect to
DEFAULT SWITCH.

Page 38 of 40
e) Choose default settings for the VHD, then for installation options choose to boot from the new ISO file.

Page 39 of 40
f) Click FINISH.

g) START the NEW VM

Windows should now install without any user input

required.

Should the installation stop any point, take a screenshot

of the error and send this to your tutor.

Page 40 of 40