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Hey Terin! Nice post! I also netboot Windows this way! To run a 20 machines in my house off the same base disk image, which we use for LAN parties. I have code

Hey Terin! Nice post! I also netboot Windows this way! To run a 20 machines in my house off the same base disk image, which we use for LAN parties. I have code and an extensive guide on GitHub: https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty https://github.com/kentonv/lanparty It looks like you actually figured out something I failed at, though: installing Windows directly over iSCSI from the start. I instead installed to a local device, and then transferred the disk image to the server. I knew that building a WinPE environment with the right network drivers would probably help here, but I got frustrated trying to use the WinPE tools, which seemed to require learning a lot of obscure CLI commands (ironically, being Windows...). You observed some slowness using Windows over the network. I did too, when I was doing it with 1G LAN, but I've found on 10G it pretty much feels the same as local. BTW, a frustrating thing: The Windows 10->11 updater also seemingly fails to include network drivers and so you can't just upgrade over iSCSI. I'm still stuck on Windows 10 so I'm going to have to reinstall everything from scratch sometime this year. Maybe I'll follow your guide to use WinPE this time.

amazingamazing 2y ago
I recently saw this and want to do something similar with just 4 machines to play relatively simple games (e.g. age of empires). I might follow what you have here directly, but am also considering just using a single machine with 4 vms. The big constraint for me is I don't want to buy a bunch of hardware.
terinjokes 2y ago
Hey Kenton! I figured you had done something similar with the LAN Party House. If I hadn't figured it out I was going to ask/look for your setup. > You observed some slowness using Windows over the network. Mini-ITX makes it a bit difficult to upgrade to 10GbE (only one PCIe slot!), and the slowness isn't bad enough in-game to deal with upgrading it just yet. > BTW, a frustrating thing: The Windows 10->11 updater also seemingly fails to include network drivers and so you can't just upgrade over iSCSI. I've read (and also observed, now) that if you install directly on iSCSI Windows doesn't make the recovery partition. This evidently also breaks 10->11 upgrades.
- kentonv 2y ago
  Oh, maybe the lack of recovery partition is my real problem, because I definitely deleted mine. The installer isn't really clear why it's failing, it just does its thing for a bit and then reboots into Windows 10 and says it didn't work, no explanation.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    Things like this iPXE have a similarity to multibooting to where you may be a lot better off NOT having a (single) dedicated Recovery partition at all, but you need full responsiveness to Windows Update. And please no hibernation for multibooting. POWERCFG /H OFF. For recovery manipulation you need to utilize the REAGENTC command, and take advantage of the existing default C:\Recovery folder. Normally this is not considered the best location for "recovery" since if C: gets borked so does default recovery console. And this really gives an example of essential use of inbuilt Helps. On a mainstream system all you have is a single (hidden) ESP volume containing its EFI folder: In admin CMD, type Bcdedit /Enum All to show all your boot entries. If "recovery" is even set up, there will be a Boot Loader entry where the Device is a Ramdisk. If so there will also be a volume letter in square brackets if the target volume is unhidden at the time. But for those of you with no recovery set up, you get to do it yourself as you see fit. Type Reagentc /info, it will confirm recovery is disabled. Reagentc /? gives you the next clue, the example /setreimage. Copy the displayed REAGENTC.EXE /setreimage /? from the display down to the active command line (or just type it in). You get two syntax examples, it's the second one. But you probably don't even have an R: volume and you want to use C: anyway to make Windows more self-sufficient from its own partition. edit it so: REAGENTC.EXE /setreimage /path c:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows After this operation is successful, there is still no apparent change under Reagentc /info, recovery is still disabled. And your BCD remains unchanged with no ramdisk object yet. "Reagentc /enable" will then autoadd the ramdisk recovery bootentry to the BCD, directing the recovery routine (when triggered) to point to your C: volume which will always exist accessibly, plus most likely have enough free drive space to accommodate the larger updates to the recovery WIM files themselves, which are recently giving users show-stoppers when their dedicated factory recovery partitions were not big enough for that. Now for the good news. Once you find a ramdisk recovery bootentry in your BCD, an easy baby-step toward multibooting is a piece of cake. Everybody already has a Windows boot menu that you are using every time you boot, it is simply not displayed if there is only one entry, like most factory set ups. So add the Recovery Console to the menu your dang self. It can come in really handy. From the Bcdedit output text, copy the shown GUID for the main ramdisk recovery object, so you can paste afterward and don't have to type it all into the following command: bcdedit /displayorder {your-guid-here} /addlast Then if you don't want to maintain the default 30 second timeout before progressing to the default OS on the bootmenu, set it for something like 5 seconds: bcdedit /timeout 5 That's it. Now if you don't have a touchscreen, you probably would be better off with the "legacy" text menu, for that you would need to change the bootmenupolicy from Standard to Legacy for the GUIDs that have a bootmenupolicy. Bcdedit /set {target-guid-here} bootmenupolicy Legacy. Also remember if using Powershell it's still having trouble with the curly brackets so in every case they need to be quoted like Bcdedit /set "{target-guid-here}" bootmenupolicy Legacy.
kennysoona 2y ago
Did you run into any licensing issues with your setup?
- kentonv 2y ago
  Microsoft keeps track of licenses in some cloud database keyed by machine fingerprint, so if you run the same image on multiple machines it's supposed to work fine. I have actually purchased licenses for all the machines. I have found, though, that sometimes machines don't actually query Microsoft for activation info, and instead complain about activation after a few hours. If I then manually go to the activation settings and click "troubleshoot activation", then it realizes that it's already registered in the Microsoft database and it stops complaining. But this is really annoying to have to do for every machine at every party, so more commonly we just don't bother, and some people end up with the annoying "Activate Windows" overlay in the corner. But it's actually far enough into the corner and subtle enough that often people just don't even notice it's there and it's fine...
  - jmb99 2y ago
    If you’ve already purchased licenses, have you considered using more “illicit” means keep the machines activated?
pinoy420 2y ago
[dead]
fuzzfactor 2y ago
Love that party house ! Looks like you have a similar soundbar to my LP-S08. I had to open it up to access the battery, and interestingly the audio output on the PCB was naturally laid out for stereo operation like you would expect. Except on mine only one channel of the PCB was populated from the factory, the other channel empty, and it was output to both speakers as mono not stereo.

amazingamazing 2y ago

I recently saw this and want to do something similar with just 4 machines to play relatively simple games (e.g. age of empires). I might follow what you have here directly, but am also considering just using a single machine with 4 vms. The big constraint for me is I don't want to buy a bunch of hardware.

terinjokes 2y ago

Hey Kenton! I figured you had done something similar with the LAN Party House. If I hadn't figured it out I was going to ask/look for your setup. > You observed some slowness using Windows over the network. Mini-ITX makes it a bit difficult to upgrade to 10GbE (only one PCIe slot!), and the slowness isn't bad enough in-game to deal with upgrading it just yet. > BTW, a frustrating thing: The Windows 10->11 updater also seemingly fails to include network drivers and so you can't just upgrade over iSCSI. I've read (and also observed, now) that if you install directly on iSCSI Windows doesn't make the recovery partition. This evidently also breaks 10->11 upgrades.

kentonv 2y ago
Oh, maybe the lack of recovery partition is my real problem, because I definitely deleted mine. The installer isn't really clear why it's failing, it just does its thing for a bit and then reboots into Windows 10 and says it didn't work, no explanation.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  Things like this iPXE have a similarity to multibooting to where you may be a lot better off NOT having a (single) dedicated Recovery partition at all, but you need full responsiveness to Windows Update. And please no hibernation for multibooting. POWERCFG /H OFF. For recovery manipulation you need to utilize the REAGENTC command, and take advantage of the existing default C:\Recovery folder. Normally this is not considered the best location for "recovery" since if C: gets borked so does default recovery console. And this really gives an example of essential use of inbuilt Helps. On a mainstream system all you have is a single (hidden) ESP volume containing its EFI folder: In admin CMD, type Bcdedit /Enum All to show all your boot entries. If "recovery" is even set up, there will be a Boot Loader entry where the Device is a Ramdisk. If so there will also be a volume letter in square brackets if the target volume is unhidden at the time. But for those of you with no recovery set up, you get to do it yourself as you see fit. Type Reagentc /info, it will confirm recovery is disabled. Reagentc /? gives you the next clue, the example /setreimage. Copy the displayed REAGENTC.EXE /setreimage /? from the display down to the active command line (or just type it in). You get two syntax examples, it's the second one. But you probably don't even have an R: volume and you want to use C: anyway to make Windows more self-sufficient from its own partition. edit it so: REAGENTC.EXE /setreimage /path c:\Recovery\WindowsRE /target C:\Windows After this operation is successful, there is still no apparent change under Reagentc /info, recovery is still disabled. And your BCD remains unchanged with no ramdisk object yet. "Reagentc /enable" will then autoadd the ramdisk recovery bootentry to the BCD, directing the recovery routine (when triggered) to point to your C: volume which will always exist accessibly, plus most likely have enough free drive space to accommodate the larger updates to the recovery WIM files themselves, which are recently giving users show-stoppers when their dedicated factory recovery partitions were not big enough for that. Now for the good news. Once you find a ramdisk recovery bootentry in your BCD, an easy baby-step toward multibooting is a piece of cake. Everybody already has a Windows boot menu that you are using every time you boot, it is simply not displayed if there is only one entry, like most factory set ups. So add the Recovery Console to the menu your dang self. It can come in really handy. From the Bcdedit output text, copy the shown GUID for the main ramdisk recovery object, so you can paste afterward and don't have to type it all into the following command: bcdedit /displayorder {your-guid-here} /addlast Then if you don't want to maintain the default 30 second timeout before progressing to the default OS on the bootmenu, set it for something like 5 seconds: bcdedit /timeout 5 That's it. Now if you don't have a touchscreen, you probably would be better off with the "legacy" text menu, for that you would need to change the bootmenupolicy from Standard to Legacy for the GUIDs that have a bootmenupolicy. Bcdedit /set {target-guid-here} bootmenupolicy Legacy. Also remember if using Powershell it's still having trouble with the curly brackets so in every case they need to be quoted like Bcdedit /set "{target-guid-here}" bootmenupolicy Legacy.

kennysoona 2y ago

Did you run into any licensing issues with your setup?

kentonv 2y ago
Microsoft keeps track of licenses in some cloud database keyed by machine fingerprint, so if you run the same image on multiple machines it's supposed to work fine. I have actually purchased licenses for all the machines. I have found, though, that sometimes machines don't actually query Microsoft for activation info, and instead complain about activation after a few hours. If I then manually go to the activation settings and click "troubleshoot activation", then it realizes that it's already registered in the Microsoft database and it stops complaining. But this is really annoying to have to do for every machine at every party, so more commonly we just don't bother, and some people end up with the annoying "Activate Windows" overlay in the corner. But it's actually far enough into the corner and subtle enough that often people just don't even notice it's there and it's fine...
- jmb99 2y ago
  If you’ve already purchased licenses, have you considered using more “illicit” means keep the machines activated?

pinoy420 2y ago

[dead]

fuzzfactor 2y ago

Love that party house ! Looks like you have a similar soundbar to my LP-S08. I had to open it up to access the battery, and interestingly the audio output on the PCB was naturally laid out for stereo operation like you would expect. Except on mine only one channel of the PCB was populated from the factory, the other channel empty, and it was output to both speakers as mono not stereo.