Installing Windows 10X 20279 (emulator image) on real hardware Created: February 12, 2020 Last Update: November 25, 2022 Authors: NT Authority, Albacore, Gustave Monce, Rafael Rivera, Daniel Kornev Status: Draft Supported Windows 10X Versions: 20279 (partially) Here's some quick notes on installing Windows 10X on real hardware from emulator image or a prepared VHDX. 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. The guide has been updated for the 20279 image recently provided by @thebookisclosed. Ideally, you'd build your own .ffu image from the .cabs. Here's a link to Unofficial Guide to Build Windows 10X .ffu Image & Apply To Real Hardware. Prerequisites Host Windows 10 Iron or Cobalt (20279 or 21xxx+). Utility USB flash drive of ~32GB+. Target CPU with Hyper-V support for VAIL. No VAIL in the newer build. Graphics card with DCHU drivers available. UEFI system firmware with the ability to disable Secure Boot. Boot drive larger than 128 GiB. An 128 GB SSD usually isn't. 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 .vhdx from the download link, which we shall refer to as Flash.vhdx from now on. 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 In 20279, these steps may arbitrarily fail. You can execute them from Windows PE as well after copying the image, if you copy the drivers to your USB flash drive, and can tell which drive letter is your UFD. 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. The general rule for inf file names and provider names in the 'keyform' is the following: Any space in the inf name or the provider name must get replaced by an underscore '_' Any dash in the inf name or the provider name must get replaced by an underscore '_' Finally, commit and finalize the image so future update application won't fail: updateapp finalizecommit After you've installed your favorite driver packages, we can prepare the utility flash drive. Make a utility flash drive Gather the following assets into a directory we'll label X:\WCOS\UtilityDrive\Boot: From an ISO of Windows 10 21286 or above (you can get it from the Windows Insider Preview 'advanced' page): boot\ EFI\ sources\boot.wim bootmgr.efi For later servicing, your WCOS\Tools folder. Use a hex editor to replace any mention of the Unicode string X:\Windows in UpdateAPI.dll and UpdateApp.exe with something like X:\Wbndows, or expect any servicing tasks to fail. An x64 EFI shell. Rename EFI\boot\bootx64.efi to EFI\boot\winx64.efi, and name the shell as EFI\boot\bootx64.efi. You'll need the shell in order to ever boot regular Windows again (including PE). A file called startup.nsh in the root: dmpstore -d SecureBootPlatformID -guid 77FA9ABD-0359-4D32-BD60-28F4E78F784B fs0:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs1:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs2:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs3:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs4:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs5:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs6:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs7:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs8:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fs9:\efi\boot\winx64.efi fsA:\efi\boot\winx64.efi If you are having troubles getting back to Windows PE/Windows Desktop, you may also try the following extra commands in startup.nsh: (Warning: these will kill every variables you have saved on your system) dmpstore -d -guid BA57E015-65B3-4C3C-B274-659192F699E3 dmpstore -d -guid 77FA9ABD-0359-4D32-BD60-28F4E78F784B dmpstore -d -guid EAEC226F-C9A3-477A-A826-DDC716CDC0E3 gdisk64.exe from GPT fdisk. ddrelease64.exe. Partitioning Connect your UFD. Open diskpart. list disk, select disk the right disk, or you'll lose all data on it and will have to do a long partition scan to have any hopes of retrieving your data, and clean + convert gpt. create partition primary size=5000, format fs=fat32 quick, assign letter=y to make a bootable FAT32 partition. create partition primary, format fs=exfat quick, assign letter=z to make an exFAT partition to house the VHDX. Putting things in place Place your boot drive directory on the drive you called Y:. Dismount-VHD "X:\WCOS\Flash.vhdx in your PowerShell to unmount the VHDX, and copy the VHDX to Z:. You should now have a tree structure similar to: Y:\ Boot\ EFI\ Sources\ Tools\ startup.nsh Z:\ Flash.vhdx Eject and unplug the UFD. Target work Use your throwaway laptop or other modern enough system with larger-than-128GB system drive. Make sure Secure Boot is off. Boot Windows PE Boot it on the target. Really. Once you get into Setup, press Shift-F10 to open a command prompt. Go back and open another, for good measure. Alt-Tab works for switching here. Copy the VHD (destructive!) Find out where your USB flash drive is mounted. This will involve doing a lot of the following: C: dir D: dir E: dir F: dir Here, we'll assume the boot volume is D: and the volume with Flash.vhdx is E:. Open diskpart, and attach the VHD: select vdisk file=E:\flash.vhdx attach vdisk readonly # wait a minute or so list disk # if MainOS etc. show up as online, good! Note down the ID of a 2048 MB disk with a 2048 MB free space, and subtract 1 from it. # note: there's no 16 Disk 17 Online 2048 MB 2048 MB The ID to note down, therefore, is 16. Also, note down the ID of the target disk (3 in this case). Wipe it. Yes. That's data loss for you. Make sure you've got backups of anything important on there. select disk 3 clean convert mbr exit (replacing 3) Copy the VHDX's content to your disk: E:\Tools\ddrelease64 if=\\.\physicaldrive16 of=\\.\physicaldrive3 bs=8M --progress (replacing 16 and 3) ... and go have a hot beverage while waiting for this to hit 131072M. Rebuild the GPT (for 512-byte disks only) You probably have a 512-byte disk, so you're going to have to rebuild the GPT. Yay! Run commands along the following: > E:\tools\gdisk64 -l \\.\physicaldrive16 [..] Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 512 8703 32.0 MiB EF00 BS_EFIESP 2 8704 33554426 128.0 GiB 4202 OSPool Remember the numbers (start, end, code and name) for each partition. Multiply the numbers by 8 (since 4K/512 = 8) - so you get 4096, 69624, etc. Now, we'll create a new GPT for the target disk: E:\tools\gdisk64 \\.\physicaldrive3 # accept any warning x z E:\tools\gdisk64 \\.\physicaldrive3 # accept the warning n 1 4096 69631 EF00 n 2 69632 268435415 4202 c 1 BS_EFIESP c 2 OSPool p # check if it makes sense - matches the above but with different sector numbers w Exit all open windows, and your system should reboot. Boot Windows PE, again Boot into Windows PE again - not the internal disk you just overwrote. Verify in diskpart if you can list volume and it'll show MainOS etc. without you having attached the VHD. Remove WCOS Security In Windows PE, open diskpart and do select volume. Find the volume named ÈFIESP we will assume here its volume id is 6, yours may be different. Then we run select volume 6 and assign. Do list volume again to find the drive letter of EFIESP, in our case it's E:, yours may be different. Delete the following file: del E:\efi\Microsoft\Boot\SecureBootPolicy.p7b You may additionally replace winsipolicy.p7b with the one from a desktop sku (the file is located in the same folder). Boot W10X OK, now you can boot your internal disk. If you haven't followed the Remove WCOS Security instructions, this will set a Secure Boot policy value, however, so you'll have to boot your utility flash drive again if you want to boot any other Windows media (or otherwise execute the dmpstore command). If everything's right, you should be booting into Windows 10X, and your graphics adapter might even be working.