Sysprep and Windows 8.1 -- missing Metro apps after reboot?

Question

So, I'm trying to figure out an issue with Sysprep and a clean-install Windows 8.1 64 Enterprise system:
When I sysprep the computer from my admin account with my unattend.xml file, when it reboots, I'm only getting 7 Metro apps at the start screen and
14 Metro Apps at the "all apps" screen -- things like Weather, Maps, Calendar, Mail, etc are missing -- and actually look like they aren't installed
as searching for something like "People" -- gives no results.
From what I've been able to gather, the behavior of the start screen should controlled by an appsFolderLayout.bin file, but when I first set up the initial
account (not "administrator", but the initial local admin account), that file does not exist anywhere.
I've tried creating the file manually by running:
Export-StartLayout -As Bin -Path C:\Temp\appsFolderLayout.bin
and either putting it in \Users\<myadminaccount>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows
or \Users\Default\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows
and sysprepping again (after restoring a snapshot to the pre-sysprep/post-clean install state), but this isn’t making any difference.
When I run sysprep /generalize — the .bin file is deleted and replaced by some other default one — that I’m not sure where it is generated from.
Does anybody have any suggestions here?    Windows 8.0 just worked with my unattend.xml file without having to mess with appsFolderLayout.bin, so I’m not sure what I’m missing.
Thanks!

Answer 1

If you are still having trouble, this is an outline of the full process I use that seems to be consistently producing good results:
- Install Windows 8.1 Enterprise with autounattend.xml, in particular, blank administrator password, add user account test, auto-logon as Administrator, run "net user test /delete" immediately after logon to get back to just having the administrator account.
There should be no reason why all that has to be done in autounattend.xml, but it is the way I do it. There are a few other mandatory settings if you want a fully-automated setup.
- At this point in time the Administrator account only shows a few tiles on the start screen, all actions are performed using the Administrator account.
- Run Schtasks.exe /change /disable /tn "\Microsoft\Windows\AppxDeploymentClient\Pre-staged app cleanup" before the task has had a chance to run.
- Install all applications, updates and settings as you want.
- Run Sysprep, in particular blank administrator password, add user account test, auto-logon as Administrator, run "net user test /delete" immediately after logon to get back to just having the administrator account. Also importantly we set CopyProfile to
false under Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup specialize pass. I don't know because I haven't tried it, but I imagine that if you run this and copy the Administrator profile to the default user profile then the default user profile may be missing some apps. We
do all customization of the default user profile explicitly by loading the registry hive and editing it directly.
After the image is deployed the Admistrator account has all the standard tiles present, but two of them report errors (I think it is Music and Videos). Any other profiles have all tiles present and all apps work.
The full sysprep XML is included below in case it is useful to anybody. The company-specific settings and passwords have been blanked out, but otherwise it is the full one we use and fairly generic apart from the Australian settings. Note that this one is
for a 64-bit image.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
<settings pass="generalize">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SkipRearm>0</SkipRearm>
</component>
</settings>
<settings pass="specialize">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<ComputerName>*</ComputerName>
<CopyProfile>false</CopyProfile>
<ShowWindowsLive>false</ShowWindowsLive>
<TimeZone>AUS Eastern Standard Time</TimeZone>
</component>
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Security-SPP-UX" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SkipAutoActivation>true</SkipAutoActivation>
</component>
</settings>
<settings pass="oobeSystem">
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<OOBE>
<HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
<NetworkLocation>Work</NetworkLocation>
<ProtectYourPC>1</ProtectYourPC>
<HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
</OOBE>
<UserAccounts>
<AdministratorPassword>
<Value>XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</Value>
<PlainText>false</PlainText>
</AdministratorPassword>
<LocalAccounts>
<LocalAccount wcm:action="add">
<Password>
<Value>XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</Value>
<PlainText>false</PlainText>
</Password>
<Description>Temp Account We have to Add because setup requires it</Description>
<Name>temp</Name>
</LocalAccount>
</LocalAccounts>
</UserAccounts>
<RegisteredOrganization>XXXXXX</RegisteredOrganization>
<RegisteredOwner>XXXXXX</RegisteredOwner>
<TimeZone>AUS Eastern Standard Time</TimeZone>
<AutoLogon>
<Password>
<Value>XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</Value>
<PlainText>false</PlainText>
</Password>
<Domain>.</Domain>
<Enabled>true</Enabled>
<Username>Administrator</Username>
<LogonCount>1</LogonCount>
</AutoLogon>
<FirstLogonCommands>
<SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
<CommandLine>net user temp /delete</CommandLine>
<Description>Delete temp user account that we have to create</Description>
<Order>1</Order>
</SynchronousCommand>
</FirstLogonCommands>
</component>
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<InputLocale>en-US</InputLocale>
<SystemLocale>en-AU</SystemLocale>
<UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
<UserLocale>en-AU</UserLocale>
</component>
</settings>
</unattend>