Image Assist: Hyper-V Tips & Tricks

Hyper-V is:

Included free within Windows 10 & 11.
Developed by Microsoft, so it works great in & with Windows.
Does not require additional software (e.g. VMWare tools) to copy / paste from host
FAST!!!

Limitations to VMWare?

USB flash drives cannot pass from host to guest as a flash drive. They can be mounted as a hard disk, but that does not work for creating the DIA USB.

How to install:

Go to Control Panel > Program > Program and Features.
Click Turn Windows features on or off. The Windows Features window is displayed.
Select Hyper-V and click OK. The system restarts to enable Hyper-V Manager.
Open Hyper-V Manager.

Minium requirements for running Image Assist:

Ensure these settings are in place on your Hyper-v. Without meeting minimums, DIA may fail to complete.

Personal preference: I disable automatic checkpoints, otherwise Hyper-V takes random checkpoints.

Tips & Tricks:

What are basic sessions & enhanced sessions?

Enhanced sessions are like VMWare tools but utilizes RDP instead of installing additional software. It allows for full screen resolution & copy / paste from the host machine to the VM. (Note: WinPE (DIA USB / ISO) will not run in an enhanced session.)
Basic sessions do not have those features.

By default, Hyper-V has Enhanced sessions enabled and will attempt to auto-connect as seen below. Clicking the X will connect to the console in a Basic session.

Changing between Basic an Enhanced sessions:

Note: Do not run the DIA capture in an Enhanced session. If you do, Sysprep will cause loss of connection with the console and not be able to reconnect.

Copy & paste files from host to VM using Enhanced sessions:

Go into an enhanced session.
Select the files on host, right-click to copy or Ctrl+C then inside VM, right-click & past or Ctrl+V. Note: Copying using this feature is typically slower than copying from a network share (depending on the network speeds).

Copy & paste text from host to VM using a Basic session:

Click Clipboard > Type clipboard text.

Copy & paste files from host to VM using a Basic session: If networking is enabled, you can browse to a network share.