Release v0.7 · CodingWonders/DISMTools

DISMTools 0.7 is now available as a stable version, with new features and enhancements:

File hashes

File	Name	Hash (SHA256)
Installer	dt_setup.exe	0B008B3FE09A9509BEDEB951468573BEB690CE1782D8768CDC3FC1DC450A479A
Portable	DISMTools.zip	57D5633D80CF57BF68B44924DE54B0F268A9EE31CD143B0ABA02145BA144CB6B

Important

If you use Windows Defender, it may incorrectly flag this version as malware. SmartScreen may also do this. Don't worry; this is safe to download and use.

This AV solution flags this program because it lacks code-signing certificates, which are quite expensive (as of January 2025, 660 and 864 dollars for 3 years of SV and EV certificates, respectively, from Comodo).

If you use other antivirus solutions, you will not see this problem. Learn more here

Note

Those using the Windows Utility to install apps can now install the stable release of DISMTools from there

Overall changes

Bugfixes

Note

This will show the bugfixes of all preview versions. To view them, expand a section

Preview 1

Fixed a minor issue where DynaLog timestamps would not use a common format for time

Preview 2

Fixed a migration issue where the color scheme would switch to dark, regardless of the preferred scheme you set in the past

Preview 3

Fixed an issue in the update checker
Fixed a deployment issue in the Theme Designer. It will let you load and save themes now instead of throwing an exception
Fixed an issue where people could write to the console output
Fixed an issue where DISM would never finish after edition servicing tasks due to a computer restart prompt
Fixed an issue where exceptions that aren't related to the DISM API were not being logged when running background processes
External issue: Fixed an issue where background processes would abruptly stop when getting package information due to specific time representations (issue: jeffkl/ManagedDism#263; fix: jeffkl/ManagedDism#264)

Preview 4

Fixed an issue where the popup mounted image picker would not show any results if the mounted image manager was already open
Fixed an issue where connecting to a WDS server would fail if it didn't have a Pending Devices policy set up
Fixed an issue where the WDS Helper client would not get the installation images in some cases

Preview 5

Fixed an issue where the PE Helper could apply the installation image to the wrong volume if it had been assigned drive letter C (#262, thanks @Real-MullaC for spotting)
Fixed an issue where the WDS Helper Server would not export installation images to "install.wim" if they were named differently in WDS

Preview 6

The fixed disk configuration routine code from the PE Helper has been ported to the WDS Helper Client

Preview 7

Fixed an issue with the used volume letter checks in the PE Helper where they would not work correctly

Preview 8

Fixed an issue where DNS address mappings were not being cleared on closure of the AD DS join wizard

New features

Preinstallation Environment Helper/ISO Creation Tools

Massive improvements were made to the DISMTools PE on network environments using WDS (#230):
- A preparation script is now included if you want to reinstate Windows Setup (this requires an Assessment and Deployment Kit that matches the version that created the boot image)
- If you prefer to continue using the DISMTools Preinstallation Environment, however, you can rely on the new WDS Helper

Note

Important Notes:

If you use Windows Server 2025, your best bet is to use the WDS Helper as opposed to the preparation script due to known issues in the new Windows Setup program found in 24H2 that make it struggle to find disk controllers even on hardware with generic controllers. More info here
More information on setting up the WDS Helper can be found in the Help documentation

The restart message is now shown in a cleaner way:

CODE: the PE Helper no longer requires dp_listdisk.dp to be present in order to list disks, as it's now generated automatically
When starting up the DISMTools Preinstallation Environment, you will now see a menu from which you can choose the installation type:

HotInstall now uses the latest version of the DISM API
HotInstall now creates a removal script that's launched on system startup to revert installation changes, in case the target system boots to the full Windows installation instead of the DISMTools PE:

The ISO creator can now download and install the latest version of the Windows ADK (10.1.26100.2454) for you if it can't find it on your system:

The default size of the ISO creator has been increased to 1280x720
The PE Helper now adds the WinPE-StorageWMI packages to the Preinstallation Environment
A new command-line alias, netinit, now lets you initialize the networking stack and enable the firewall on demand; and other administration scripts are now included
The Driver Installation Module (DIM) is now added to the Windows PE image directly, allowing you to use it when booting to it via the network
The startup screen in HotInstall is now localized
The Driver Installation Module (DIM) has seen a minor design refresh to let you select items more easily, with grid lines
PowerShell script execution policy settings have been off-loaded from the DT PE startup code and put into the ISO creation script. This can present startup time improvements

Unattended answer files

UnattendGen has been updated to the latest version, making it cross-platform and compatible with Linux and macOS
You can now hide post-installation script windows when creating answer files:

When configuring the wireless network, a link to go to your router's gateway page (typically 192.168.1.1) has been added. This lets you get the authentication technology of your router more easily if you don't know it:

The system component screen has been fully revamped:

You can now configure your answer file to make devices join an Active Directory domain more easily
You can now remove the answer files from your image easily:

You can now configure guest virtual machine support for Parallels hypervisors on Macintosh computers:

Image tasks

DISMTools now uses pnputil to add and remove drivers on active installations:

DISMTools can now map AppX package registrations on active systems to local users in the system:

Note

This feature can be turned off in the program options:

Help Documentation

The DISMTools Tour is now available so you can get started more easily. It can be launched automatically when you first set up DISMTools:

Theme Engine

The program now uses a theme engine that makes it easy for you to make your own themes:

DynaLog

DISMTools now includes a log viewer (DynaViewer)

Note

Both the theme designer and DynaViewer come in 2 versions: one using .NET 4.8 and the other one using .NET 2.0. This allows for many operating systems to be supported, as old as Windows 98 Second Edition

DynaLog now logs process IDs, which can help you tell multiple DISMTools processes apart more easily

Miscellaneous

CODE: the language engine, first introduced in HotInstall, has been ported to DISMTools. It will be used in the future
CODE: information dialogs are now able to disable the close button when getting information using Windows APIs
The following components were updated:

Component	Version in latest release	New version
Managed DISM API	`3.3.0`	`3.3.12`
Markdig	`0.41.0`	`0.41.3`

CODE: more LINQ queries have been introduced
CODE: a new progress reporter module has been introduced
CODE: background processes have been refactored to use new list items
CODE: startup code in most image task dialogs has been moved to IImageTaskDialog interface implementations
7-Zip has been updated to version 25.01
The installer is now built using Inno Setup 6.4.3
CODE: Registry actions are now carried out by the new Registry Helper
DISMTools now detects if the computer has booted into Safe Mode and offers you the choice to load the online installation management mode:

DISMTools now features a revamped popup mounted image picker:

You can now hide the clock in the project view
DISM output is now saved to log files after operations are complete

Removed features

The restart dialog in the DISMTools Preinstallation Environment has been removed due to false positives in antivirus software other than Windows Defender (#246, thanks @MTTGamer for informing me)

Note

The removal was done way back in May, in 0.7 Preview 1 and 0.6.2 Update 1. AV software should no longer pick any threats now, apart from Windows Defender's usual false positives.

My commitment to keeping PCs secure still goes on and whatever "malware infections" were caught by antivirus software were only false positives, but I didn't accept the risk of keeping it, so it was removed.

32-bit ARM support has been fully removed from the PE Helper