rbalsleyMSFT
a81261fa6b
Optimize-FFU is broken due to the Recovery partition not having a name. dism checks for the presence of a name for each partition and if it doesn't have one, optimize-FFU breaks. The fix is in the ffuprovider.dll in the 25255 branch, which is in the Insider ADK. The public release for that isn't coming soon, and using the Insider ADK requires test signing/test mode to be turned on and secureboot disabled. This causes issues with systems that have virtualization-based security. Due to this, changing the code back to not creating a recovery partition while building the FFU, and creating the recovery partition during deployment and then letting Windows copy in and configure WinRE after. Later this year, whenever the ADK gets released, I'll update the script to revert this behavior.
Using Full Flash Update (FFU) files to speed up Windows deployment
This repo contains the full FFU process that we use in US Education at Microsoft to help customers with large deployments of Windows as they prepare for the new school year. This process isn't limited to only large deployments at the start of the year, but is the most common.
This process will copy Windows in about 2-3 minutes to the target device, optionally copy drivers, provisioning packages, Autopilot, etc. School technicians have even given the USB sticks to teachers and teachers calling them their "Magic USB sticks" to quickly get student devices reimaged in the event of an issue with their Windows PC.
While we use this in Education at Microsoft, other industries can use it as well. We esepcially see a need for something like this with partners who do re-imaging on behalf of customers. The difference in Education is that they typically have large deployments that tend to happen at the beginning of the school year and any amount of time saved is helpful. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Configuration Manager, and other community solutions are all great solutions, but are typically slower due to WIM deployments being file-based while FFU files are sector-based.
Updates
2023-05-22
Automated most of the process
2023-03-03
Added script convert-wimToFFU.ps1 which will convert any WIM file to a FFU. If you don't want to capture apps in your FFU, this is a much quicker way to get a FFU file to deploy. Check the ConvertWimToFFU.docx file for more info.
Getting Started
If you're not familiar with Github, you can click the Green code button above and select download zip. Extract the zip file and make sure to copy the FFUDevelopment folder to the root of your C: drive. That will make it easy to follow the guide and allow the scripts to work properly.
If extracted correctly, your c:\FFUDevelopment folder should look like the following. If it does, go to c:\FFUDevelopment\Docs\BuildDeployFFU.docx to get started.