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Since I had been testing out the UpdateOS script to see how it performed based on the number of CPU cores, I figured I should try the same thing with the Autopilot Branding package as I had noticed that it too was fairly slow, taking close to 10 minutes to complete in a VM. The first change needed for that was better logging, so you could more easily see after the fact where most of the time was spent. Each log line will now show a timestamp:
Interestingly, almost all of the time was spent on one simple task: Installing .NET Framework 3.5. As with the UpdateOS script, this is a servicing operation that requires installing an optional component that is downloaded from Windows Update. But if I make a similar change to the VM configuration, moving from two vCPUs to four vCPUs, the time is reduced from 10 minutes to 6. While I didn’t test more vCPUs, I wouldn’t expect much better performance with more.
Since I don’t really need .NET Framework 3.5 for my testing (the built-in 4.8 is sufficient), I commented that out in the Autopilot Branding script. (You can put it back if you need it.) I wanted to still install something, so I specified WMIC, even though it’s (presently) still installed by default — it will at least finish quickly.
Since I was making changes anyway, I added a few more apps to the list to be removed (Microsoft.BingNews, Microsoft.GamingApp, Microsoft.People, Microsoft.WindowsMaps), not that I would expect anyone to really miss them. I also cleaned up the logging for app removal errors:
As always, you can get the latest from GitHub at https://github.com/mtniehaus/AutopilotBranding. Make whatever tweaks you need to the configuration XML or the script itself, generate a new .intunewin file using the makeapp.cmd file, upload it to Intune, and configure the command lines and detection rule. (See GitHub for more details on that setup.)
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