Installing Windows 10X (emulator image) on real hardware
Here's some quick notes on installing Windows 10X on real hardware. For this example, we're assuming a system with no other critical disks installed, and a helpful host system being around to set up the initial image.
Prerequisites
Host
- Windows 10 Manganese build (195xx).
- Utility USB flash drive of ~32GB+.
Target
- CPU with Hyper-V support for VAIL.
- Graphics card with DCHU drivers available.
- UEFI system firmware.
- Preferred: 4Kn boot drive. We'll provide steps a bit later for converting the image.
Host work
Fetch and mount the emulator image
Make sure you have a clean Flash.vhdx from the W10X emulator. Copy it someplace, and preferably keep another backup as well.
Mount it using PowerShell (as administrator):
Mount-VHD "X:\WCOS\Flash.vhdx"
Check if the emulator image is mounted correctly:
Get-StoragePool -FriendlyName OSPool
This should look like the following:
FriendlyName OperationalStatus HealthStatus IsPrimordial IsReadOnly Size AllocatedSize
------------ ----------------- ------------ ------------ ---------- ---- -------------
OSPool OK Healthy False False 127.9 GB 21.81 GB
Gather UpdateApp and verify it works
Start diskpart so you can mount MainOS:
list volume
# select the volume called MainOS
select volume 42
# assuming M: is free
assign letter=m
exit
From the MainOS partition, go and hunt down the following files and drop them in a standalone folder (for example, X:\WCOS\Tools):
\Windows\Servicing
- UpdateApp.exe
- CbsApi.dll
- CbsMsg.dll
\Windows\System32
- CbsCore.dll
- DrvServicing.dll
- IUSpaces.dll
- IUSpaces_vb.dll (copy and rename IUSpaces.dll)
- UpdateAPI.dll
- cimfs.dll
- cmiadapter.dll
- cmiaisupport.dll
- cmintegrator.dll
- dpx.dll
- drvstore.dll
- msdelta.dll
- mspatcha.dll
- mspatchc.dll
- turbostack.dll
- wcp.dll
- wdscore.dll
Run cmd.exe as administrator, go to the tool directory, and try getting the installed packages on the image:
cd /d X:\WCOS\Tools
updateapp getinstalledpackages
The result should look a lot like the following:
UpdateApp - Update Application for Windows Mobile
[00:00:00] Loaded servicing stack from X:\wcos\tools with session name IUPackageInfoSession_EFIESP
[00:00:00] External storage staging directory is: (null)
[00:00:00] Closing session IUPackageInfoSession_EFIESP
[00:00:00] Loaded servicing stack from X:\wcos\tools with session name IUPackageInfoSession_MainOS
[00:00:00] External storage staging directory is: (null)
[00:00:01] Closing session IUPackageInfoSession_MainOS
164 packages:
Microsoft-OneCore-HyperV-Guest-UpdateOS-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.19563.1000, UpdateOS
Microsoft-OneCore-HyperV-Guest-UpdateOS-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, UpdateOS
Microsoft-OneCore-ServicingStack-UpdateOS-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, updateos
Microsoft-OneCore-ServicingStack-UpdateOS-UX-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, updateos
Microsoft-OneCoreUpdateOS-Product-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~10.0.19563.1000, updateos
Microsoft-OneCoreUpdateOS-Product-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, updateos
Microsoft-Windows-OneCoreUpdateOS-ImageCustomization-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, updateos
Microsoft-Composable-ModernPC-BootEnvironment-Core-CodeIntegrity-Sbcp-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, EFIESP
Microsoft-OneCore-BcdBootoption-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.19563.1000, EFIESP
[...]
getinstalledpackages completed successfully
command took 7 seconds
If it does, congratulations! You can move on to the next step.
Inject graphics and network drivers
For this example we'll show the Intel HD Graphics driver, but you might need to add more INFs depending on your hardware. If you can't find the right INFs, why are you even doing this?
Place extracted Intel drivers in a directory, so that you have e.g. X:\WCOS\DHCUDrivers\Graphics\iigd_dch.inf. Open iigd_dch.inf, and note down the values for 'Provider' and 'DriverVer'. For me, those were:
Provider=%Intel%
DriverVer=08/23/2019,26.20.100.7158
The provider name is an indirected variable here, so we go and find what %Intel% meant as well. A bit below in the INF, we find the following:
Intel = "Intel Corporation"
Good! Now, invoke updateapp with the data we've just discovered to install the INF to the BSP partition in your WCOS image:
updateapp install "DriverPackage|X:\WCOS\DHCUDrivers\Graphics\iigd_dch.inf|Intel_Corporation-iigd_dch.inf~amd64~26.20.100.7158~bsp|0"
Note the recurrence of Intel_Corporation and 26.20.100.7518. The installation process will complain with an error code of c0880005 if you get the 'keyform' wrong.
After you've installed your favorite driver packages, we can prepare the utility flash drive.