Win11 22H2 unattended install partially works

[AndyCot]

W11 22H2 unattended via a batch file partially works as follows:
- UEFI bios needs user interaction to exit via continue option.
- Install worked without user interaction once the UEFI bios was exited via the continue option
- Guest additions failed to install even though the options were shown that VBoxManage.exe would do the install as shown as follows:
additionsIsoPath = C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
installGuestAdditions = true

Note: "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxGuestAdditions.iso" exists.

[klaus]

The need for interaction to get the Windows 11 installer to start is expected. It's how Microsoft's UEFI boot loader behaves. It's lots less clever than the old legacy BIOS one which makes a guess if there's already an OS installed (and only in that case expects interaction).

In principle we know how to fix this (needs remastering the DVD image which pends implementation in the UDF case, which our VISO code can't handle right now), but this will certainly not be possible to implement in the next months.

If you remaster the DVD image yourself (there are alternative copies of the boot loader on the DVD which don't ask) then you could avoid the use interaction, too.

Or if you want to minimize effort you could simply untick the "EFI" checkbox. Which produces a legacy BIOS install of Windows 11 which is still possible and doesn't show this behavior.

[scottgus1]

a legacy BIOS install of Windows 11

Quick question, Klaus: Will a Legacy BIOS install of 11 satisfy 11's TPM and Secure Boot requirements?

[mpack]

Will a Legacy BIOS install of 11 satisfy 11's TPM and Secure Boot requirements?

No way, unless I seriously misunderstood what secure boot is, i.e. it's a feature offered by modern UEFI BIOSes. So the normal ISO hacks would be required to get Win11 to install, but that could then be unattended.

[klaus]

Windows 11 happily (without any tweaking) installs on systems with legacy BIOS, as long as the TPM is there (which would be the case if you just untick the EFI checkbox in the new VM wizard). In this case of course there is no secure boot, but Windows 11 doesn't mind.

At least that was the state with 11 21H2. Didn't have a chance to try with 11 22H2.

[AndyCot]

I changed the batch file to change the firmware to BIOS instead of efi and it works without any user intervention. Thanks very much for this as it means one less human step required for testing (VM used for app dev and testing)..

It looks like the guest additions are installed in the background and when finished Windows 11 shuts down (shown as an abort in the VB gui). No dialog is shown when the install is begin done and as such the install process is not very intuitive that it is occurring and why the shutdown occurs after a number of minutes.

[klaus]

The Guest Additions install done as part of an unattended Windows install is a silent one, and that doesn't show any UI. The whole unattended install actions after the base OS install are part of a .cmd file (the template is in the UnattendedTemplate directory in the VBox install dir, win_postinstall.cmd), which Windows apparently runs without opening a window. Means it's a bit difficult to give any indication what's currently going on.

And the fact that the VM ends up in "Aborted" state indicates you're running into some bug which causes the VM process to crash. Unless we can reproduce it'll be tricky to figure out the root cause.