Has anyone figured out how EI.CFG files work on the Windows 10 ISOs? I've used the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool that Microsoft provides to get myself the ISO files I'll need. But ideally I'd like to consolidate my ISO collection a bit. Right now, I have four Windows 10 ISOs - Home x86, Home x64, Pro x86, Pro x64. With Windows 7 and 8, I was able to get away with having only two ISOs - one for x86 and one for x64. I realize that I could slim that down even further to a single ISO, but I found that when I make an all-in-one ISO, UEFI booting only works from 64-bit systems. So I keep both versions in order to make sure that I can boot from any computer. With Windows 7, all editions are displayed as choices when no EI.CFG file exists on the install disk. Windows 8 required an EI.CFG to prompt for versions, so I have one for retail and one for volume that I switch out when I want to switch versions. Windows 10 appears to work differently. Each of the versions that I download has no EI.CFG on the disk, so I can't delete it to prompt for versions. I also tried copying the EI.CFG file from one of my Windows 8 ISOs, but this also doesn't cause the ISO to prompt for version. It still installs the version that was specified from the Media Creation Tool. So does anybody know how to manipulate the Windows 10 ISOs to make them prompt for a choice between Home and Pro while installing? Thanks for any help
They are used to skip the key prompt on clean install (not needed since there's a skip button now) They also set the eula channel (Don't believe it's very important to choose either retail/oem/vl It doesn't affect activation in any way) The only thing it really does that is notable is it won't let you enter a key on clean install whether you want to or not. It won't interfere with upgrades, to my knowledge. At least it didn't in my testing.
I'm not too concerned with it interfering with upgrades. But I like to have the ISOs on a flash drive that I can use to clean install when necessary. I just think it's really inconvenient to need four ISOs. That's why I'm trying to get the installer to prompt for a version to install like Windows 7 and 8 install ISOs were capable of doing.
I'm doing GA integrated versions right now for all the en-us indexes, but the resetbase takes a long time for each index. It probably won't be done till tomorrow at the earliest. 3074683 updates a few of the setup files and some recenv stuff, so have to do boot.wim and winre.wim as well.
This will list the versions in the iso...only needed for Home/Pro version. This is for Retail only but if VL's get released just edit it as needed.
Thanks Boss, waiting for your kindly work otherwise I have to install large patches after fresh install
This is how EI.CFG worked on the Windows 8 ISOs. I tried this on my Windows 10 ISOs, but it doesn't cause the version prompt to appear - it just skips the product key prompt and goes right to installing. It seems like the ISOs created from the Media Creation Tool only contain one version