Windows 11 and 10 Evaluation builds fail to start

[ahb2k2k]

hello,

I'm very new to packer and devops in general and trying to learn through this tool. I was able to figure out some issues like:

• VM was created but CD rom for iso was not connected.
• Kept getting a bad CD error when I cancelled the process with the 'c' option when using ./build.sh

However, I am now facing an issue where it looks like the autounattend.xml file is not being loaded. I am using the EVAL version on windows 10. I also tried the change someone else mentioned here a few days ago about editing the autounattend.pkrtpl.hcl but that didn't resolve my issue.

Note: I do have a valid win 10 ent key which I had initially entered but that isn't working

I'd appreciate any assistance.

[tenthirtyam]

Assume you have the require binary to create the ISO on demand and also that your host has vmtools?

[ahb2k2k]

I grabbed the ISO from the evaluation center and uploaded it to a datastore. I’m not connecting to a specific host but to the cluster and yes vmtools are in the same folder as the ISOs. Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

…

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[tenthirtyam]

Will look at it this week.

[ahb2k2k]

Thank you. I suspect it's something very dumb that I messed up.

This is where it gets stuck. If I manually click on 'Next' from the vmware console, it goes through the entire build flawlessly. Is it not finding the image name for some reason in the autounattend file?

I have compared the settings to the working version of windows server 2022 autounattend and the lines below are the same.

<InstallFrom>
                  <MetaData wcm:action="add">
                     <Key>/IMAGE/NAME</Key>
                     <Value>${vm_inst_os_image}</Value>
                  </MetaData>
</InstallFrom>

[tenthirtyam]

Ah, i see the problem! 🤦‍♂️

I'll get a fix posted.

[ahb2k2k]

UPDATE: I edited the following line in the windows.pkr.hcl file and that fixed my problem:
vm_inst_os_image_ent = "Windows 10 Enterprise" to the following:
vm_inst_os_image_ent = "Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation"

[tenthirtyam]

Yep, looks like I'll need to configure it to amend "Evaluation" if eval is true.

[tenthirtyam]

Replace the following:

vm_inst_os_image = var.vm_inst_os_image_pro

with:

vm_inst_os_image = var.vm_inst_os_eval ? "${var.vm_inst_os_image_ent} Evaluation" : var.vm_inst_os_image_pro

And then...

vm_inst_os_image = var.vm_inst_os_image_ent

with:

vm_inst_os_image = var.vm_inst_os_eval ? "${var.vm_inst_os_image_ent} Evaluation" : var.vm_inst_os_image_ent

[tenthirtyam]

#896 opened.