Windows 10 first time setup

[Tinribs]

Hi All,

Now we're in lockdown again my main task seems to be unpacking and prepping laptops to go out to students for home study. This is obviously something that needs to be done but it seems to be a job that takes up a horrible amount of time. The two most arduous tasks are unpacking (not sure this can be avoided) and then getting past the initial first time setup of Windows.

For speed's sake we are not putting the school's image on the new laptops - mainly because we never know what make or model the next lot will be. Instead we are setting up a local user that allows the students to connect to the internet and run Teams etc..... I have a script that will do this and it takes less than a minute per computer. If you add on all the palaver with first setup this time increases massively.

What i would like to know is if there is a way to boot with a USB stick and run a file that will answer all the questions that standard Win 10 Pro will ask with generic answers, then create the relevant users, without any user intervention? If there is something similar for Win 10 Home edition this would also be helpful.

 

No idea if this is possible - I know we can set up an answer file for PXE booting etc when using SCCM but I have no idea how to do that in this case...

TIA

[computer_expert]

Windows configuration designer will allow you to create a provisioning package which should allow you to automate most of the config. Put the provisioning package on the root of a flash drive and plug it in before the device reaches the OOBE stage.

 

If you have intune and autopilot you can upload the hardware hash and intune will provision the devices pretty much hands off (older versions of Win10 will have a few more prompts for language, as it was only fairly recently with something like 2004/20H2 that honours the autopilot langauge selection). Autopilot only works with pro and higher.

Edited January 7, 2021 by computer_expert

[mavhc]

because we never know what make or model the next lot will be

 

I've never found that to matter much, living in the future, everything's 64 bit and drivers download from MS, as long as the network drivers work