Question SysPrep / Deploying images

[pmjm]

Hi all,

Hoping someone might have an answer to this.

I am currently in a position where I'm testing a LOT of hardware configurations. Many different platforms, motherboards, CPUs, GPUs, it's a lot of fun tbh.

I sorta stumbled into this without any guidance, and developed a strategy to figure out what my standard benchmark suite was going to be, built a "gold image" of Win11 in VMWare, and then used SysPrep to generalize that image so I can deploy it to multiple hardware configurations.

The idea is that any time I make even a minor hardware change, say, swapping a GPU, rather than running DDU and hoping everything goes well, I simply redeploy my image, install the appropriate GPU driver to my virgin OS, and run my tests.

Everything has worked fine so far, I include a number of games from Steam, Epic in my tests. But once I started adding games from Xbox, I started getting failures in SysPrep.
Errors like: Package IOInteractiveAS.PC-HITMAN3-BaseGame_1.0.32.0_x64__6h0y724g59e1w was installed for a user, but not provisioned for all users. This package will not function properly in the sysprep image.

Hell, the Xbox app itself threw an error in SysPrep.

I understand this is by design, that these Windows apps are per-user and thus can not be generalized. The xbox games represent about 500GB worth of downloads if I had to install them every time. That's hours of waiting for downloads to complete, not to mention might put me over my ISP bandwidth quota if I test too many systems.

So I'm wondering what the workaround is. How can I create a hardware-agnostic Windows image with these apps pre-installed so I can quickly deploy them to new hardware?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

[USAFRet]

I am currently in a position where I'm testing a LOT of hardware configurations. Many different platforms,

Everything has worked fine so far, I include a number of games from Steam, Epic in my tests.

How does many configurations mesh with games?

Business, internet cafe, something else?

 

[pmjm]

How does many configurations mesh with games?

Business, internet cafe, something else?

I'd rather not dox myself but the data that we collect is provided to a number of audiences, some of whom will care about gaming performance using various combinations of hardware. Others will care more about real-world productivity metrics, production benchmarks, compile times, video transcoding capability, etc.

 

[USAFRet]

I'd rather not dox myself but the data that we collect is provided to a number of audiences, some of whom will care about gaming performance using various combinations of hardware. Others will care more about real-world productivity metrics, production benchmarks, compile times, video transcoding capability, etc.

It seems like you are trying to make SysPrep do FAR FAR more than what it is supposed to.

Why are you trying to forcefeed the same config into productivity systems AND game systems.

Why do the production systems need the Steam and Epic things?

This will not work.

 

[pmjm]

The productivity benchmarks are in their own SysPrepped image (primarily due to the difference between GameReady & Studio drivers). I'm trying to create JUST a games image. To be clear, I don't mind needing to log into my Microsoft/Steam/Epic account in order for games to be available to play. I just need to not have to download and install them a thousand times every time I try a new motherboard.

I need to be able to provide reports detailing the performance of a number of applications, including games, on various combinations of hardware. The hardware doesn't necessarily need to be optimized for one task or the other, I just need an accurate accounting of how it performs.

 

[USAFRet]

The productivity benchmarks are in their own SysPrepped image. I'm trying to create JUST a games image. To be clear, I don't mind needing to log into my Microsoft/Steam/Epic account in order for games to be available to play. I just need to not have to download and install them a thousand times every time I try a new motherboard.

And I remain confused.

 

[pmjm]

Okay, let me put it this way. I have a stack of 40+ motherboards. 24 different CPUs, 15 or so GPUs. I need to test every combination of CPU, Motherboard, GPU possible and detail how various applications perform on the resulting system. Next month I'll have a whole new set of hardware to repeat.

But honestly, I feel like I'm being asked to justify my use case when it's really beyond the scope of the question. All I really need to know is how I can create a hardware-agnostic Windows image, with Sysprep or a third-party utility, that has Xbox games already preinstalled so I don't have to download and install them hundreds of times.

I do thank you for the replies and for trying to help, I hope my frustration isn't coming off as ungrateful. Cheers.

 

[USAFRet]

For something like this, the use case is often VERY relevant.

But from your initial, it sounds like SysPrep will not work for this scenario.

This sounds like it needs a team of humans, rather than a one man band trying to do everything in software.

 

[TerryLaze]

But once I started adding games from Xbox, I started getting failures in SysPrep.
Errors like: Package IOInteractiveAS.PC-HITMAN3-BaseGame_1.0.32.0_x64__6h0y724g59e1w was installed for a user, but not provisioned for all users. This package will not function properly in the sysprep image.

Have you tried with a smaller game to install 'for all users' instead for choosing only the current user?!

 

[pmjm]

I've been testing various deployment solutions for the last 12 hours and I finally found one that works.

Macrium Reflect has a feature on their bootable iso that "redeploys" a Windows install to new hardware. It examines the system drivers loaded in a Windows installation and compares them to the hardware that it detects, disabling incompatible drivers and triggering Windows to redetect hardware on the first boot.

Your Windows image can have anything installed, even Xbox games or Microsoft Store apps, and they will be preserved using this option. It's a different use case than SysPrep but there's some overlap in their capabilities and I hope this info proves useful to someone else.

Cheers.