Creating a custom default profile on Windows 10 1803

Creating a custom default profile is a good way to streamline a Windows 10 deployment. How do you achieve this?

Note:- this article refers to the default profile creation process on Windows 10 version 1803, fully patched as of 05/07/2018. Further servicing updates (Windows patches) or feature updates (OS upgrades) will possibly invalidate this, although I will strive to keep this article as up-to-date as humanly possible.

The best way to set up a custom default user profile is to run from Audit Mode. This is a special mode of Windows that is invoked during the build process. The original purpose of it was for corporations to complete installation tasks before shipping them to users who could then complete the installation in the usual fashion. In Audit Mode, the device is logged on as the local Administrator account (which will be disabled afterwards) and allows changes to be made to the device prior to sysprep. However, if sysprep is run with the /copyprofile switch, the local user profile will then be copied into the default user profile and then become the default profile for the image.

Be aware that you can only run Audit Mode a specified number of times if you reach the stage of running sysprep when you’re finished – four times will be your limit, unless you use the /skiprearm switch. I find it easy simply to take a VM snapshot of the reference image prior to running sysprep and restoring if necessary.

In order to invoke Audit Mode, start a Windows 10 build and wait until you reach the point shown in the image below, then press Ctrl Shift and F3.

The machine will then boot into Audit Mode, where it will automatically log on as the built-in Administrator account.

Click on Cancel on the sysprep dialog box. Now, you can set about making any changes you want on a device or user level. Normally at this point I remove UWP apps as specified in this article. However, as this post is merely about the user perspective, here are some of the things I tend to do here:-

• Set background and branding
• Set Explorer to show file extensions
• Set File Explorer to open at “my PC” instead of “Quick Access”
• Set the Start Tiles as required
• Set desktop icons as required (add My Computer and Control Panel)
• Set Taskbar Pinned Items as required
• Set browser homepage and search options

After this, we just need to do a quick bit of tidying up. Simply run this command to grab a copy of the Start Tiles layout to deploy to new users. Run it from an elevated PowerShell session

Export-StartLayout -Path $ENV:LOCALAPPDATA\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\LayoutModification.xml

Once you’ve got this done, you need to create an answer file for sysprep to read to tell it what to do. You can either create one using Windows tools, or simply steal the pre-canned one I have prepared here 🙂 If you’re just interested in running with the pre-determined version, skip ahead to the section marked “Pre-canned answer file”

If you want to do this manually, download and install the Windows ADK, the 1803 version is currently available from this link. Next, install the Deployment Tools option from the ADK only.

Make sure you’ve got your Windows 10 source files available. You will need read/write access to the source files for Windows , so take a copy of the install.wim file from the \sources folder and put it somewhere you can access it with Read/Write permissions.

Once this has completed, run Windows System Image Manager from the Start Menu. From the File menu, choose New Answer File. Click on Yes and locate the install.wim file from your Windows image. Click on Yes to create a catalog file.

Now, we can go to work to customize the answer file as required. Under Components in the bottom left pane, select the folder that starts with amd64_Microsoft-Windows_Shell-Setup (or x86_Microsoft-Windows_Shell-Setup if you’re on a 32-bit platform), select it and choose Add Setting to Pass 4 specialize

Next you will see this is now added to the Answer File section in the middle pane. Expand this out and set the CopyProfile flag on the right-hand pane to True

You can set any of the other options within the answer file as you wish, but this one is the only one we actually need. Once finished, validate the answer file by using Tools | Validate answer file, then save it somewhere as an .xml file. In this case, we are just saving to c:\unattend.xml.

You can then open the file up in a text editor if required and check it.

Pre-canned answer file

If you want to avoid all this mess, here’s a pre-made answer file I use on a regular basis 🙂 Items highlighted in bold you may need to check to match your environment, but otherwise you should just be able to copy and paste into an text file and use it with impunity!

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?><unattend xmlns=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend”>
<settings pass=”specialize”>
<component name=”Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup” processorArchitecture=”amd64” publicKeyToken=”31bf3856ad364e35″ language=”neutral” versionScope=”nonSxS” xmlns:wcm=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State” xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”>
<CopyProfile>true</CopyProfile>
</component>
</settings>
<cpi:offlineImage cpi:source=”wim:D:/sources/install.wim#Windows 10 Enterprise” xmlns:cpi=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi” />
</unattend>

Watch out – these lines may wrap.

So once you’ve created your answer file, either manually or using the one above, you now need to run sysprep. Open up an elevated command prompt and run this command

c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown /unattend:c:\unattend.xml

Naturally, replacing the correct path to your own answer file.

An interesting aside – sometimes I get an error here that directs me to the sysprep log (setupact.log), and I commonly find this happens when I have been removing UWP apps at this stage. If you have removed a provisioned app that still exists in the user profile, sysprep will fail. You need to make sure any provisioned apps removed using Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage have also been removed from the active user account using Remove-AppxPackage. Also it is possible to get an error here if the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service is running.

Once this is run, sysprep will do its stuff and then shut down the image

The system is now shut down and ready for image deployment with your custom default profile baked-in, but what I usually find is that the default profile will be a bit bloated and contain some references that are not necessary (like PowerShell command history, for instance). To get around this, I run the following script either during imaging or post-imaging just to ensure that the default profile is fully tidied up and as streamlined as possible. There are batch commands in here but they will run from PowerShell without issue, it does however need to run elevated.

takeown /f c:\users\default\appdata\local\Microsoft\WindowsApps /r /a /d Y
icacls c:\users\default\appdata\local\Microsoft\WindowsApps /grant Administrators:F /T /C /L
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\LocalLow -force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows -exclude “Shell”,”WinX” -Force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft -exclude “Windows” -Force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local -exclude “Microsoft” -Force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows -exclude “Start Menu”,”SendTo” -Force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft -exclude “Windows” -Force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
get-childitem C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming -exclude “Microsoft” -Force | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname -force -recurse -confirm:$false}
Get-ChildItem c:\users\default -Filter “*.log*” -Force | Remove-Item -Force
Get-ChildItem c:\users\default -Filter “*.blf*” -Force | Remove-Item -Force
Get-ChildItem c:\users\default -Filter “*.REGTRANS-MS” -Force | Remove-Item -Force

This script will strim your default profile from around 125MB to about 4MB. Now, you are ready to deploy the image fully using your default profile that you have customized!

Summary

Setting up the default profile is an easy way to make general customizations, improve logon times, and make the whole user experience a lot more slick. It also cuts down on the amount of baseline policies that are required for the user environment, as they can be baked in. Ideally, this process should be repeated for each new iteration of Windows 10 feature releases.

You can also, if you wanted to, centralize the deployment of your default profile by copying the profile you created into a folder in the NETLOGON share and calling this folder Default User.v6 (for Windows 10 1703 and above, prior Windows 10 versions use the suffix .v5). In this situation, you could make changes in one location and have them reflected everywhere (assuming that DC connectivity is available for the client).