Generate autounattend.xml over Website no more possible. How to fix?

[Cookiebaker2026]

Since last week importing of autounattend.xml files over https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ is no more possible.
Don't know if I'm the only one who has this issue but Generator works for me a long time very good.
Tried to short the URL and use it with Edge browser and Firefox for Win 11 but always the same issue.

After clicking the import button for the XML file it comes up the following error: 414 Request-URI Too Large.
How can I fix this or is this service closed for ever?

[cschneegans]

That is not supposed to happen. Open the autounattend.xml file you are trying to import in a text editor and locate the comment at the start of the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State">
	<!--https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/?…-->

How long is the URL in that comment?

Feel free to attach the autounattend.xml file here.

[Cookiebaker2026]

Hello, this is the file,

indeed its very huge. Don't know why this happened.

autounattend.xml

Regards

[cschneegans]

I have replaced leading spaces with tabs and removed comments such as

# ======================

to make the URL more compact. The resulting file can be imported again: autounattend.xml

In general, it appears that your PowerShell scripts contain many repeated statements. For example,

if (Test-Path $ffplay_Source) {
	New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $ffplay_DestDir -Force | Out-Null
	Copy-Item $ffplay_Source $ffplay_Destination -Force
}

and

if (Test-Path $ffprobe_Source) {
	New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $ffprobe_DestDir -Force | Out-Null
	Copy-Item $ffprobe_Source $ffprobe_Destination -Force
}

should be refactored to use a common function.

[Cookiebaker2026]

Cool :-) Many thanks for the correction of the file.

Will try to optimize it a bit with your advice with this one:

That saves me a lot of time and further investigations.

The strange thing which I don't understand why it works very good when I made the iso installation.

---

Another question, is it possible to run the generator also offline on a stick?

I tried it with this, but there is an issue with the import function. It shows a list of files but not the generator.

SchneegansGeneratorPortable.zip

[cschneegans]

Another question, is it possible to run the generator also offline on a stick?

There is currently no offline variant. See this answer for how to use the generator library in a PowerShell script or your own .NET project.

[Cookiebaker2026]

I just tried to create an offline variant. My intension was to reduce my bandwith and have a tool for WinPE as portable version to be independable of internet connections. For future an idea is it to translate the generator UI in german.

I have not check it in all cases and the extensions have to checked deeply. There are some differences of the xml files in comparing it with your online generator. Not big but there are some.
It's only a first step. In FirstLogon scripts I have outcommented FirstLogonScriptType's to force the user to fill in the right extender.
If it is free choosable it could lead to some misunderstandings. Because if I'm right the there are some unattend-xx.xx were hardcoded concerning FirstLogon.ps1, DefaultUser.ps1, UserOnce.ps1 and Specilize.ps1. I copied the parts of your online Generator. Also there is
a difference between Skip integrity check or not.

The sequence of the unattend-xx.xx files has also checked. In the moment its not quite the same as the online Generator.

What positively astonished me is that the same xml files can be loaded between online and portable.

For the moment I have done it in one huge index.html file.

It takes a lot of time to check everything and to improve.
I understand and appreciate now better how much time and efforts it takes to make such a generator working.

index.html