WinRE fails after successful MDT deployment

Question

WinRE fails after successful MDT deployment
In our environment we are using Intune Wipe in order to reset Windows pc’s. Our PC’s are running Windows 10 21H2. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t work 100% of the time.I need to reimage pc’s every once and a while. In some cases, wipe / PC reset is not possible. I want to use my MDT server to solve this issue. I have updated MDT (incl. ADK2004 winPE etc.) and built an image which is installing mainly Windows 10 + 2 -3 manufacturer apps. All the rest is getting installed from my Intune. So far so good. The machine is getting installed and it looks like everything is working as it should but, when I tried to reset the pc, it failed to boot again. I get a blue screen which is asking for the language – I have never seen that screen before, and after that, I get the Windows repair screen, but I cannot do anything there. Trying to troubleshoot WinRE returns that the image cannot be found. My MDT TS is formatting the disk using UEFI. It makes alle the partitions incl. Restore partition that should use 100% of the remaining space of the disc. In our case that gives a healthy NTFS partition of about 2.4 GB. So, space is not the issue, I guess. I thought then that what I need is a WinRE image on that partition but how to do that? I have a TS step: ‘Add Windows Recovery (WinRE)’. Enabling it OR disabling it does not change anything. I tried to add ‘PrepareWinRE=YES’ to the customsettings.ini. After a successful install I tried to reset the pc. This time I was presented with the MDT install screen. The PC has contacted MDT. Removing this entry only sent me back to the error before. What can I do to make PC reset work after mdt install???

Answer 1

Hi again,
All right, I have found the cause and WinRE is working now. There were 2 things I needed to fix:
I needed to add a language to the image - it’s a Danish environment and,
I needed to add device drivers to the image. Especially drive and video.
I guess it is because I am building my wim image on a VMWARE machine

To achieve that, I needed to mount the wim image on my MDT and from it, mount the WinRE.wim image in order to make changes to it. See more about that here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/customize-windows-re?view=windows-11
In other words, I needed to use DISM to add the language and the drivers to the WinRE.wim image to enable it to boot.
The language part was straight forward - as I have installed ADK + Win PE on the MDT server I just found all those cubs there. About the drivers, I used the /recurse switch as described here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/add-and-remove-drivers-to-an-offline-windows-image?view=windows-11
I simply got all the drivers from my drivers folder on my MDT. I know it results in a fairly big WinRE.wim image but the process of finding exactly which driver I needed (and I have 2 different Dell models) is very time consuming, and I didn’t really have the time for it. We have the place on the disc and the install process is OK - considering. I did follow all the optimizing steps, but the result is that the image has gotten bigger… Guess I may get back to it one day… :)
I guess the problem was really to understand what is happening and fix it. I haven’t had much experience with WinRE before, so it was new to me. I was glad though for my experience with DISM. It’s a great tool. :)
About the Task Sequence, I have enabled the TS Task and commented the line in the ini file. If both are active, it results in the PC trying to PXE boot to MDT again and I am not interested in that right now.
I needed to attach the changed wim image again to my production share and point to it from my TS.
best regards,
Ido

Answer 2

Hej Simon,

I have read the article before and tried it. It is not solving my issue… Either I get an error or if only one of them - the TS and the value in the ini file are set or the PC is booting into MDT to start install if both are set. Normally, this will be accepted but, in this environment, where we do use local Wipe I need the pc’s to reset locally… they don’t do that and I suspect that WinRE lacks a image to reset by. This is what my test are showing. I am not so routine in MDT… and I am not so sure how to do that… I have looked into the WinRE TS as well trying to understand what the script is trying to do but could not find anything which will make sense…
Best regards,
Ido

Answer 3

Yes it is strange but, I think I know what the problem is (I did some more reading... :-) ) , I think that I need to add language and device drivers to the WinRE.wim image. To do that I need to use DISM. I am planning on trying this and I will write in this forum if it will succeed. :-)
Thanks,
Best regards,
Ido