Speed up Windows 10 or Windows 11 Upgrade Process – Task Sequence Vs. Servicing

Let us learn about Speeding Up Windows 10 or Windows 11 Upgrade Process—Task Sequence Vs. Servicing. This article focuses on different ways to speed up Windows 10 or Windows 11 upgrade processes.

As we all know, installation time is a critical parameter in the Windows 10 feature upgrade process. Hopefully, this post will teach you an easy way to speed up the process.

In this post, we will discuss one of the “some” practices for reducing installation time. The Windows setup process executes at “Below Normal” priority by default.

Windows setup is kept below priority because the upgrade process should be transparent to users, and it should NOT impact the performance of the devices badly. But you might need to speed up the Windows 10 upgrade process in some scenarios.

NOTE! – Check out the recommendation in the conclusion section of the post. A new client settings option exists to prioritize the Windows 10 Upgrade process on SCCM 1902 or later. “Specify thread Priority for Feature updates.”

The Question?

Do you think the Windows feature upgrade setup (setup process, which you can see in the above screen capture) should execute with “below normal” priority? If so, you should accept that the Windows 10 upgrade process with “Below normal” priority will result in a longer upgrade /install time.

This post will learn how to override the default Windows setup process priority.

Note!: Windows setup “High” priority process consumes more system resources like CPU, Memory, etc. I recommend testing this process in the staging environment before implementing it in production.

The Two Ways to Speed Up Windows 10 Upgrade

SCCM has two (2) methods for upgrading Windows 10 features. Let’s discuss how to configure Windows setup priority in each technique.

1. Task sequence
2. Windows 10 Servicing.

I’m not getting into the detailed comparison between Windows 10 upgrades using Windows 10 Servicing Vs. SCCM Windows 10 Upgrade task sequence.

As per the latest poll conducted in the SCCM Professionals Facebook group (19K members), most SCCM admins are comfortable with SCCM upgrade Task Sequence (100+ votes for TS but only 20 votes for servicing).

How to Speed up Windows 10 Upgrade Process using Windows servicing?

Setupconfig.ini is a configuration file that can override default Windows 10 installation parameters. Below are some of the installation parameters that you can change.

This post will focus only on the Windows setup process to override the default priority. We need to use the Setupconfig.ini file while using the Windows 10 servicing approach.

What is Setupconfig.ini?

You can check the following sample INI file to understand how to use the Setupconfig.ini file! The setupconfig.ini is a custom configuration file that customizes the Windows setup behavior. This file is handy for SCCM admins to speed up the Windows 10 upgrade process.

[SetupConfig]

• Priority=High
• NoReboot
• ShowOobe=None
• Telemetry=Enable
• InstallDrivers=<path of the folder containing INF and SYS drivers>
• ReflectDrivers=<path of the folder containing INF and SYS files for the encryption drivers>
• PostOOBE=<path of the folder containing the script to execute post OOBE>

Location of SetupConfig.ini

By default, the setupconfig.ini doesn’t exist. You must copy the ini file to the default location before the Windows 10 servicing upgrade using SCCM. This activity of creating an ini file will be a one-time activity.

The following is the location of the SetupConfig.ini file. Windows will search for SetupConfig.ini in the below-mentioned default location.

“%systemdrive%\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WSUS\SetupConfig.ini”

How the SetupConfig.ini Helps to Speed up Windows 10 Upgrade?

The Windows setup process was executed based on the priority you configured in the setupconfig.ini. In this post, we will use the setupconfig.ini file below to override the preference from “Below Normal” to “High.”

 [SetupConfig]

Priority=High

sample file: 2019-03-03 14:22:33, Info                  MOUPG  SetupHost::Initialize: CmdLine                = [/PreDownload /Update /Quiet  /progressCLSID 089fdf65-9dc5-4d3a-8754-44a1601d5572 /ReportId {192F3952-8ADF-4CC7-9E2A-3DDE13A0F60A}.201 “/ClientId” “5b3cd6cc-a388-41bc-80c5-b32753e3b3df” “/CorrelationVector” “NbSRDhFnE0aRDy2m.6.0.0.2”   /Priority High]

Results

Check the following Logfile setupact.log to confirm the servicing command-line option. Servicing: Windows Installation command line after the override.

Following are the Servicing Before and After Windows Setup Process override screen captures.

How to Speed up Windows 10 Upgrade using SCCM Task Sequence?

You can speed up the Windows 10 upgrade using the SCCM task sequence variable. With the SCCM Task sequence, we need to use a variable to change the priority of the Windows setup process.

Setup SCCM Collection Variable

• Task sequence Variable: OSDSetupAdditionalUpgradeOptions
• Value : /Priority High

Results – Speed up Windows 10 or Windows 11 Upgrade Process – Task Sequence Vs. Servicing

Check setupact.log to understand changes in Windows 10 or Windows 11 upgrade priority.

Task Sequence: Windows Installation command line after the override.

2019-03-03 08:37:19, Info                  MOUPG  SetupHost::Initialize: CmdLine                = [/Install /Media /Quiet  /InstallFile “C:\_SMSTaskSequence\Packages\CHQ00019\Sources\Install.wim” “/ImageIndex” “3” “/auto” “Upgrade” “/noreboot” “/postoobe” “C:\WINDOWS\SMSTSPostUpgrade\SetupComplete.cmd” “/postrollback” “C:\WINDOWS\SMSTSPostUpgrade\SetupRollback.cmd” “/DynamicUpdate” “Disable” “/Priority” “High” /MediaPath “C:\_SMSTaskSequence\Packages\CHQ00019”]

Following are the Results of the Windows 10 Upgrade Task Sequence Before and After the Windows Setup Process override.

You can now see that TS initiates the Windows 10 setup process with “High” priority.

Conclusion:

I observed that a few minutes were reduced after changing the Windows setup process priority from “Below Normal” to “High.”

NOTE! – I would recommend using this process to speed up Windows 10 upgrade if there is a real business case for old devices in your organization.

You will measure the time saved by comparing the start and end times recorded in Setupact.log. For more details about setupact.log location, please refer

Check out the keywords – “SetupHost Logging Begin” & “SetupHost Logging End.” You can note down the time stamp for the Begin & End of the Windows setup process activity and measure the improvement.

Before changing the process priority (Default) ( setupact.log)

• 2019-03-02 18:43:45, Info                  MOUPG  *************** SetupHost Logging Begin ***************
• 2019-03-02 18:43:46, Info                  MOUPG  SetupHost::Create IWUInstallationSession2 result: [0x80004002]
• 2019-03-02 18:43:46, Info                  MOUPG  SetupHost::Create IWUInstallationSession result: [0x0]
• 2019-03-02 22:38:01, Info                  MOUPG  SetupUI: Power request cleared!
• 2019-03-02 22:38:01, Info                  MOUPG  **************** SetupHost Logging End ****************

After changing the process priority  (setupact.log)

• 2019-03-02 13:34:43, Info                  MOUPG  *************** SetupHost Logging Begin ***************
• 2019-03-02 15:59:34, Info                  MOUPG  **************** SetupHost Logging End ****************

Resources

• Override the default Windows setup priority
• Use Setupconfig.ini to install Windows

Author

Vimal has more than ten years of experience in SCCM device management solutions. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like Microsoft Intune, ConfigMgr (SCCM), OS Deployment, and Patch Management. He writes about the technologies like SCCM, Windows 10, Microsoft Intune, and MDT.