If that is the actual cause, then it explains perfectly why this error does not appear on 1709 (or older) setup files. Also, all of the Windows 7 and 8.1 WIM images I tested work fine, except for WES7 WIM images (which display the same error due to lack of license.rtf in System32). Now I just have to find out how to somehow make the setup ignore the error or skip the license.rtf check. The VM has 8GB of RAM. I looked at the setuperr.log file, and it does indeed display an error about loading the EULA text. Not sure what it's actually attempting to load that throws the error, since it doesn't display much information.
They don't just have to exist. They need to exist in the exact directory that it expects them to be in. If it expects them in "\windows\system32\en-us\volume\education" then it needs to be in that folder. One annoying thing I kept running into as I was doing newer AIO stuff when win10 came out was that they all needed to be in the correct channel and sub-folder. I ended up having to make base images with added licenses for the correct channels and skus that matched the ei.cfg which I set to Volume.
The tool will take care of all for N and non N, it just takes a few seconds to run. It extracts the Pro N and non N en-US licenses folder and adds it to the other sku's.
You have to change where it looks for the file. You can use arbitrary file or license.rtf which may be in system32 directory. To do the patch you have to replace the following Code: 53 00 79 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 6D 00 33 00 32 00 5C 00 25 00 73 00 5C 00 4C 00 69 00 63 00 65 00 6E 00 73 00 65 00 73 00 5C 00 25 00 73 00 5C 00 25 00 73 00 5C 00 25 00 73 00 to one of the following values (choose if you want to have a hosts file as license or a default license which I'm not sure if is in all versions): System32\drivers\etc\hosts Code: 53 00 79 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 6D 00 33 00 32 00 5C 00 64 00 72 00 69 00 76 00 65 00 72 00 73 00 5C 00 65 00 74 00 63 00 5C 00 68 00 6F 00 73 00 74 00 73 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 System32\license.rtf Code: 53 00 79 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 6D 00 33 00 32 00 5C 00 6C 00 69 00 63 00 65 00 6E 00 73 00 65 00 2E 00 72 00 74 00 66 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 This has to be done in winsetup.dll and setupplatform.dll files. winsetup.dll also has to be replaced in boot.wim.