External scripts feature

[ikarisan]

After playing around a bit with the generated autounattend.xml file, I expanded it significantly with my own scripts (all under "Run custom scripts").

But I didn’t like the fact that all scripts had to be included inline in the XML file. So I moved all the (custom) inline scripts into separate files, which are now located on the USB stick in an install_scripts folder:

DefaultUser-custom-01.ps1, DefaultUser-custom-02.ps1, ..., UserOnce-custom-05.ps1, ...

I now run a script called copy_install_scripts.ps1 in "specialize" (right after $xml.Load('C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml')), which uses Robocopy to copy the content of the folder from the installation media to C:\Windows\Setup\Scripts. I easily locate the installation media by using something like

if (-not $MediaDrive) {
    $MediaDrive = (Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem | 
        Where-Object { Test-Path "$($_.Root)sources\install.wim" }).Root
}

My suggestion, therefore, is not to store any scripts listed under "Run custom scripts" in the XML file itself, but to store them externally in a directory. This would keep the XML file small and manageable.

[cschneegans]

A single, self-contained autounattend.xml file is easy to apply and is more reliable at runtime because there are no external dependencies.

You can very well call external scripts (and you even have to when your scripts exceed to 64k character limit for the bookmark URL), but I don't think this would be beneficial in most scenarios.