WJF00159 imaging pass on 2026-05-24 logged:
[ERROR] waxtrace-manifest.json not found at
C:\WaxTrace-Install\waxtrace-manifest.json
even though the manifest is present on the PXE share. Root cause: the
xcopy approach copied EVERYTHING including the 12+ GB formtracepak\
directory of vendor ISOs, then deleted formtracepak\ afterward and
re-created it with just the one matched ISO. The /EXCLUDE:NUL placeholder
("pass NUL device as exclude-file") was silently ignored by xcopy in
WinPE, and the redirection >/dev/null 2>/dev/null hid any errors. The copy was
either aborting mid-stream (running out of patience / disk / connection)
or the manifest landed but got clobbered in the rmdir/recreate dance.
Switch to robocopy /XD formtracepak which excludes the dir up front so
we never even attempt the 12 GB of ISOs. Keep /NFL /NDL to suppress
per-file listing but leave overall output visible (no >/dev/null) so any
failure is debuggable from the install log. Check errorlevel >= 8
explicitly (robocopy exit codes 0-7 are all "OK").
Smoke tested on win11 VM with a representative tree (manifest +
bay-config + backups\WJF00159.zip + prereqs\hasp.exe + dummy
formtracepak\ ISOs): formtracepak\ excluded, all other files +
sub-dirs copied cleanly, exit 1 (= OK).
Pushed to boot.wim.with-ps (the correct PowerShell-bearing wim - the
one I had been editing before was missing powershell.exe) and deployed
to /var/www/html/win11/sources/boot.wim on 172.16.9.1.
8e1f81b942