I used dism to add all of the packages from the iso cabs\neutral folder to the ValidationOS.wim. Then copy that wim into a Win10 iso, shift F10 at first screen, then diskpart and applyimage to get ValidationOS on a vmware drive. Now have basic network connectivity when I boot the ValidationOS. No command line ssh client, and the scp program that comes with seems broken. Then mounted the ValidationOS disk as a second disk in a different vm, and copied over the Win10 OpenSSH folder. That worked. Now I can scp things from my home network to the running ValidationOS. The only gui app I have so far found working is the calc.exe program copied from 32bit Win XP. And, so far, SemWare editor is the only working editor I have. Any version of notepad I have tried has failed, also the previously mentioned WinVi. I suspect a lot of dll depencies for windows gui apps are broken.
What a Colossal Missed Opportunity from microsoft. It's for the factory floor. Fine. But should that be stuck with command line for the next decade like it's 1981? That's microsoft's small-minded vision? Garbage that is limited even as a headless OS? For us consumers this has exactly zero value. Does not even warrant a thread. The PE from windows 10/11 iso is way more useful (and faster!). Heck, even DOS is more useful, at least you can run 16bit UI file managers. "Validation OS"? Not even a basic memory check.. Hard Pass.
You don’t seem to understand what it should be used for. It’s not for "us customers", it’s mainly for hardware manufacturers to diagnose hardware problems while manufacturing Windows devices. Nothing that you’re regularly doing at home, most likely. You also can’t compare the Windows Preinstallation Environment to the Microsoft Validation OS because they both exist for literally a different reason. Both don’t need more than a command line, because you can do everything you want with it without any file manager, and if you need one, just use regular Windows. Just because something works doesn’t mean it’s supported by Microsoft.
I've been on an Apple factory floor and I can assure you their OS had both headless and GUI interface on-premises. Microsoft lives in a fantasy world where they assume manufacturers are walking with their surface tab in two hands to remotely manage an automated factory, when the reality is that most things require on-site tinkering by hand (it's cheaper). And that's assuming their garbage limited mdm or whatever software offerings don't crap out every 2nd step. And of course no contingencies for air-gapped areas to quickly interface with various work-bench touch-screens & etc. So what's the point then of "VOS is DOS" released without basic GUI support in mid 2022, in the context of MDL users = consumers? Unless I'm mistaken and the forum is filled with Pegatron staff, but even then?! I take it as a confirmation that Windows is littered with ultra bloated exploitable unstable inconsistent crap, and to even pass the rigorous requirements of a factory floor, it has to be stripped down this much. Guess it could be worse. It could come with msn + bing webview2 widgets and be 4GB
I agree with AveYo this is absolute crap and there are other systems that are ' similar ' , but with everything one needs allready built in . Thats the same for me with the self made PE programs . ...... whats the point besides playing post offices ? Yesterday i took active boot disk 22 , updated it , updated the programs , set them up , and it works and does everything i need ........ and its 510 mbs .
I agree with the consensus that this is of no use to average users. But then again, I don't think anyone ever said that it was. It was simply reported as something new available from Microsoft. Now that people have tried it, and reported back on it's (non) value, we can just ignore it.
Someone else might find a niche use for it. Here's my helper script create.bat Code: @echo off pushd "%~dp0" & title Validation OS prepare if not exist ValidationOS.wim echo ERROR! run from a folder where you've extracted VALIDATIONOS.iso & pause & exit /b echo Mounting image index 2 (for USB media) rd /s /q Mount 2>nul & md Mount dism /Mount-Image /imagefile:"ValidationOS.wim" /index:2 /MountDir:"Mount" echo;&echo Adding Tools folder to image if it exists (for extra stuff) if exist Tools\* xcopy Tools Mount\Tools /ECHYBIQ 2>nul echo;&echo Adding Drivers folder to image if it exists if not exist Drivers\* goto no_Drivers Dism /Add-Driver /Image:"Mount" /Driver:"Drivers" /Recurse Dism /Get-Drivers /Image:"Mount" :no_Drivers echo;&echo Adding cabs folder to image if it exists if not exist cabs\neutral\* goto no_cabs set "cabs_neutral=" & set "cabs_en=" for %%C in (cabs\neutral\*.*) do call set cabs_neutral=%%cabs_neutral%% /packagepath:cabs\neutral\%%~nxC for %%C in (cabs\en-us\*.*) do call set cabs_en=%%cabs_en%% /packagepath:cabs\en-us\%%~nxC DISM /Image:"Mount" /Add-Package %cabs_neutral% DISM /Image:"Mount" /Add-Package %cabs_en% :no_cabs echo;&echo Importing registry tweaks reg load HKLM\VOS_SYSTEM "Mount\Windows\System32\Config\System" reg add "HKLM\VOS_SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\" /v SystemBootDriveLetter /t REG_DWORD /d 88 /f reg unload HKLM\VOS_SYSTEM echo;&echo Saving image as boot.wim DISM /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"Mount" /Commit ren "ValidationOS.wim" "boot.wim" echo;&echo Done. Copy boot.wim to your usb-drive\sources replacing existing file pause exit /b Extract the iso to a folder, copy the script there and run as admin to make boot.wim, to be copied on an already made windows setup usb\sources folder (overwriting existing). Had high hopes for it and eagerly checked documentation and made the script even before the iso finished downloading..
ValidationOS is not useless, I think we must wait October for most developement, and I expect he can replace any Linux lite with SSH.
@Chibi ANUBIS : Yes. fwiw: I used lighttpd-1.4.49-1-win64-ssl.zip package from lighttpd.dtech.hu. It is packaged with a bunch of cygwin dll's, and I also had to add pdh.dll. Since the windows device portal was on port 80, configured lighty listen on port 8080, and then use netsh command to open firewall port 8080. Getting it to run as a service was a bit tricky. Edit - 1. Can use "sc config WebManagement start=disabled" to get rid of that Web Management gui. 2. netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="port80" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=80 (opens port 80 to the world) 3. Nginx and lighttpd (for windows) will then both run run pretty much out of the box 4. Apache24 for windows runs, but depends on vcruntime140.dll, which is not included, but not hard to find