Most people probably know that you can break into Autopilot by pressing Shift+Fn10 to bring up a command prompt. Here are some aspects that people may be less aware of.
The Command Prompt runs in the security context of DefaultUser0. This is a local admin account used for deployment. The account and the profile are supposed to be deleted at the end of Autopilot, but they are not. You can still see the profile in C:\Users.
Obviously, you can run any command line actions. But you can also bring up GUI applications:
- “explorer” to open Windows Explorer. From there, you can navigate to run other GUI applications.
- “control panel” to open the Control Panel (or “appwiz.cpl” to bring up Programs and Features)
- “compmgmt” to bring up Computer Management, for Services, Device Manager, Disk Manager, Event Viewer, Scheduled Tasks, Users and Group
- “eventvwr” for Event Viewer
- “taskmgr” for Task Manager
- “start ms-settings:” to bring up the Settings app.
You can run “powershell.exe” to run PowerShell cmdlets in the Cmd console. Or you can use Explorer to navigate to PowerShell and run it from there.
You can open the Edge Chromium browser to download or upload stuff.
You can use Shift+Fn10 at the beginning, to create a configuration before the main Enrollment Status Page (ESP) phases begin. You can use it when Autopilot fails in Device Preparation or Device Setup. You can use it any time in between. But you cannot use it in the Account Setup phase because, in this phase, the session runs in the user security context and not DefaultUser0.
Some of the things you may want to do at the beginning:
- Increase the size of the Microsoft-Windows-DeviceManagement-Enterprise-Diagnostics-Provider/Operational event log, from the default 1028 KB
- Install Wireshark (but, if you do this, you need to make sure the VC++ dependency does not interfere with any VC++ app deployment)
- Create a C:\Temp folder to save logs and exports.
After you open the Command Prompt, if you navigate back to the ESP, the console will be hidden again. But it is still running. Click Alt+Tab to open it again, or to select any of the GUI applications that are still running. For example, if you started Wireshark at the beginning, then you can go back to the same Wireshark at any time with Alt+Tab.