Boot directly to audit mode

Question

I'm playing around with Windows Embedded Standard 8 here, and haven't quite gotten a hang of it all yet. My question is: how would I setup my answer file (in ICE), to go directly to audit mode after the initial setup, without running the OOBE pass?

I managed to get it to work once, by setting the reseal mode to Audit in pass 7/OOBE. The problem now was that whatever option I chose in the sysprep utility, it would ignore the rest (or at least pass 7) of my answer file. I.e. it will prompt for all of the stuff that I preconfigured in the answer file.

From the documentation it seems that going directly from Specialize to Audit should be possible.

Or should I just let it run OOBE once, then reseal it manually? (Edit: Just tried this, it seems to ignore the rest of the answer file in this case too)

Answer 1

When the system boots, you can press CTRL+SHIFT+F3 to get into Audit Mode. The TechNet article ‘Boot Windows to Audit Mode or OOBE’ has helpful information about the methods of booting to Audit Mode including showing you how to mount the image in DISM and replacing the answer file with one that will force an Audit Mode boot. The OOBE options will be skipped when booting to Audit Mode, and the settings would be removed when you run Sysprep with the /generalize switch to create your final image anyhow.

Once you have finished modifying the system in Audit Mode, do not use the graphical Sysprep window to get back to OOBE mode. Use a command line and specify the unattend file (that doesn’t have the reseal setting) in the command line.

Sysprep /generalize /OOBE /shutdown /unattend:

Your final image should be captured at this point and the OOBE settings in the file you specified will be applied on first boot after deploying the image.

More help with the command line options can be found in the TechNet article ‘Capture an Image for Deployment (Generalize)’ and ‘Sysprep Command-Line Options.

Hope this helps,