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MODWIN Changelog

What's new in MODWIN v6.0

Jan 6, 2024
  • The main focus for this update was to provide Unattended installation support. MODWIN provides support by adding an unattend file to your iso. The unattend file does not include system language options due to languages not being changeable. What language you select during media creation is what you are stuck with, so the default answer file in MODWIN works on all languages of Windows despite there being some English language options in the script. These options cannot be removed either, or the unattend file will not work right and halt the setup midway through.

New in MODWIN v5.0 (Dec 5, 2023)

  • A remove all packages option has been added that is able to check the packages loaded on any wim and then it prints a “safe” list that will automatically remove each of these packages for us.
  • Microsoft-OneCore-ApplicationModel
  • Microsoft-OneCore-DirectX
  • Microsoft-Windows-Hello
  • Microsoft-Windows-InternetExplorer
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-Handwriting
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-OCR
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-Speech
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-TextToSpeech
  • Microsoft-Windows-MSPaint
  • Microsoft-Windows-MediaPlayer
  • Microsoft-Windows-PowerShell
  • Microsoft-Windows-Printing
  • Microsoft-Windows-QuickAssist
  • Microsoft-Windows-StepsRecorder
  • Microsoft-Windows-TabletPCMath
  • Microsoft-Windows-WMIC
  • Microsoft-Windows-Wallpaper
  • Microsoft-Windows-WordPad
  • OpenSSH-Client-Package
  • You may notice where dism will display an error message for packages like InternetExplorer, mediaPlayer, and others on the first attempt at removal. This is due to MODWIN printing all packages to the “safe” list with the names shown above. All the wims extracted from any iso Microsoft or UUPDUMP have extra packages with the same names, just different numbers, for reasons I am unsure of. In regular windows 10 and 11 images, you will only see the error once, as the correct package is the second in the list. However on Windows ARM images you will see the error a couple of times until it reaches the correct option that is uninstallable. I am unsure how to make this any simpler so if someone does find a simpler way for the safe autoextraction mechanism, do let me know! Either way, the performance is faster than human so I hope it helps.
  • A remove all features option has been added that runs without any errors. Note it does exactly what it says and will turn off the defender functionality so if you wish to retain that, turn it back on. The remove all packages option keeps defender support out of personal preference to keep general users safer. This is explained in the new simplified “safe” packages list on github. https://github.com/01101010110/MODWIN/blob/main/%22SAFE%22%20PACKAGES
  • The manual remove features and enable features menus were cleaned up so they don’t produce any additional text anymore, just features.
  • The build iso code was fixed, I had the wrong iso level, it needed 3 for large file support, so now arm isos will build correctly, and theoretically you should be able to make iso images as big as you want (needs testing). I did a smaller stress test by mounting the wim and then shot over 2 different windows isos in the USER folder and built the iso as an uncompressed wim and it built successfully. The disk was 15gb in file size and setup in vmware with both isos showing in the C: after setup finished.
  • That being said I am tired of manually installing windows so I’ll try to get unattended support added in the next update. Will probably be a few weeks before I get that version, v6 out, need to update a few other projects on here first.

New in MODWIN v5.0 (Dec 5, 2023)

  • A remove all packages option has been added that is able to check the packages loaded on any wim and then it prints a “safe” list that will automatically remove each of these packages for us.
  • Microsoft-OneCore-ApplicationModel
  • Microsoft-OneCore-DirectX
  • Microsoft-Windows-Hello
  • Microsoft-Windows-InternetExplorer
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-Handwriting
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-OCR
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-Speech
  • Microsoft-Windows-LanguageFeatures-TextToSpeech
  • Microsoft-Windows-MSPaint
  • Microsoft-Windows-MediaPlayer
  • Microsoft-Windows-PowerShell
  • Microsoft-Windows-Printing
  • Microsoft-Windows-QuickAssist
  • Microsoft-Windows-StepsRecorder
  • Microsoft-Windows-TabletPCMath
  • Microsoft-Windows-WMIC
  • Microsoft-Windows-Wallpaper
  • Microsoft-Windows-WordPad
  • OpenSSH-Client-Package
  • You may notice where dism will display an error message for packages like InternetExplorer, mediaPlayer, and others on the first attempt at removal. This is due to MODWIN printing all packages to the “safe” list with the names shown above. All the wims extracted from any iso Microsoft or UUPDUMP have extra packages with the same names, just different numbers, for reasons I am unsure of. In regular windows 10 and 11 images, you will only see the error once, as the correct package is the second in the list. However on Windows ARM images you will see the error a couple of times until it reaches the correct option that is uninstallable. I am unsure how to make this any simpler so if someone does find a simpler way for the safe autoextraction mechanism, do let me know! Either way, the performance is faster than human so I hope it helps.
  • A remove all features option has been added that runs without any errors. Note it does exactly what it says and will turn off the defender functionality so if you wish to retain that, turn it back on. The remove all packages option keeps defender support out of personal preference to keep general users safer. This is explained in the new simplified “safe” packages list on github. https://github.com/01101010110/MODWIN/blob/main/%22SAFE%22%20PACKAGES
  • The manual remove features and enable features menus were cleaned up so they don’t produce any additional text anymore, just features.
  • The build iso code was fixed, I had the wrong iso level, it needed 3 for large file support, so now arm isos will build correctly, and theoretically you should be able to make iso images as big as you want (needs testing). I did a smaller stress test by mounting the wim and then shot over 2 different windows isos in the USER folder and built the iso as an uncompressed wim and it built successfully. The disk was 15gb in file size and setup in vmware with both isos showing in the C: after setup finished.
  • That being said I am tired of manually installing windows so I’ll try to get unattended support added in the next update. Will probably be a few weeks before I get that version, v6 out, need to update a few other projects on here first.

New in MODWIN v4.0 (Nov 21, 2023)

  • The entire project has been converted to C++. It is still a console app for now with plans for a separate GUI version in the future.
  • The project is now a standalone executable instead of an installer and batch script.
  • Since there is no installer, MODWIN will now run a check before initializing the main menu to see if C:/MODWIN exists. If it does not, MODWIN will automatically build all the needed files and folders, then open File Explorer to C:/MODWIN/ISO so you can paste your copied ISO files into the folder. This will be default behavior, so you can pre-emptively have your Windows ISO copied and when you run MODWIN, it will open file manager to the ISO page for you to simply paste in your files.
  • The project is being moved away from using oscdimg so we don’t upset Microsoft. The open-source binary “xorisso” is being used now with Cygwin libraries to run the binary. The new binary and libraries are bundled into the executable and the Xorisso Project’s Github page is linked below. I’ve also gone into detail in the source notes below how I used a program to turn xorisso and it’s libraries into an array so it could be bundled into the program for extraction. I also included some knowledge what this even means as it blew my mind and it may yours too.
  • Code was added to allow the script to detect if our unpacked windows iso contains an install.esd or an install.wim file, removing the need for the user to dig through their directories, as well as removing the need to type in a number for that entry.
  • The apps, packages, and features menu option has been removed and now each item has their own entry on the main menu because I don’t know why I did that to begin with, haha. These menus are all much more functional, clean, and easy to use. If you are installing your own APPS, MODWIN can read from the APPS folder and install all items for you automatically.
  • The registry editing code is now able to open regedit for us and upon closing regedit, it will unload the hive so you can select your next hive or leave the menu without the extra step of manually unloading the hive.
  • More error checking code was added to help the program remain functional if items were not in the directories as expected, like a missing ESD or WIM file, which will cause an error code in certain menus and trigger the appropriate response to the user. Choice loops have also been added so the program doesn’t break if user enters anything other than the specified numbers or letters.
  • The “all-in-one” scripts were removed as I don’t think they are particularly helpful and will instead be posted on github in a text file so one can reference what apps / packages/ and features are “safe” for removal.
  • A “remove all” function was added into the Application menu that will literally remove all installed apps, which is currently safe, as the three application packages that cannot be removed will not allow themselves to be. This is a function I will watch in future Windows updates, as it may cause trouble later on.
  • In the future I will add a remove all “safe” packages option in the package menu, it’s just a little hard the logic there but it will be done. Same with the features, all features can be turned off, I just wanted to get a working release out first before I start doing anything more.

New in MODWIN v3.2 (Mar 27, 2023)

  • This update corrects a problem some of us are having where dism spit out blank app.txt files and therefore would not populate the apps, packages, or features on screen for us to be able to remove.

New in MODWIN v3.1 (Mar 23, 2023)

  • The missing code was added to fix the iso building step. Thanks to user indospot on xda for pointing out the missing -b from the build code.