What's next for DISMTools (October 2023 Update)

[CodingWonders]

Well, DISMTools 0.3.2 has come out, so we're ready to work on version 0.3.3. These are some features that will make it into this version:

Adding missing tasks (again!)

The September update of this monthly discussion had already mentioned this feature. Did it succeed? Well, sort of, but not really. The tasks that were introduced were the Windows PE setting dialogs, the image split dialog, and the driver export dialog. However, that wasn't it.

The problem with going native

I had a goal of implementing these tasks using native methods, and not DISM. There are upsides to native methods: they are faster and more efficient. However, they have their downsides: they involve a lot of research.

Some image settings, like the ones related to international or Windows PE servicing, are stored as registry keys. Not that hard, right? Well, no. You need to find the exact key or keys that are affected by a setting change, so this process involves a lot of research - in the form of testing.

This method did work out for the Windows PE setting dialogs, which get the following settings from the registry:

- Target path:
  - Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinPE
  - Value: InstRoot (type: REG_SZ)
- Scratch space:
  - Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\FBWF
  - Value: WinPECacheThreshold (type: REG_DWORD)

That's how you get something like this:

To find out the aforementioned exact keys, I used a combination of DISM, the Registry Editor, and RegScanner from NirSoft. Here is an example:

Finding the GeoID value of the current location for this image

Usually, string-based values are a little easier to detect when using the "Exact Match" match setting. DWORD values are harder to detect though.

Here's a file comparison between 2 registry keys with WinDiff after detecting the keys affected by the process of setting a layered driver:

In red, the registry values of a Windows image with a layered driver; in yellow, the registry values of a Windows image without a layered driver

Things are going well in the research, and here are some keys that change when performing international servicing:

- Default Time Zone: HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Control\TimeZoneInformation\TimeZoneKeyName
- GEOID (Location): HKU\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International\Geo\Nation
- Layered driver: HKLM\System\ControlSet001\Services\i8042prt\Parameters\OverrideKeyboardIdentifier

Unfortunately, that slows down the implementation of those tasks, and that's what made DISMTools 0.3.2 not ship them. Version 0.3.3 will just use DISM to get those values instead until the aforementioned research has been completed.

More localization

The latest localization improvement in DISMTools occurred in version 0.2.2, with the inclusion of the Spanish language and automatic language detection. As more people all over the world are using this program, the current selection of languages is becoming limited. Planned for DISMTools 0.3.3 is language support for French. Even though I know a little bit of French, I don't know the exact translations of the words used in the program; thus, DeepL will be used on my part. Here is a French translation of this paragraph if you don't understand English:

La dernière amélioration de la localisation dans DISMTools a eu lieu dans la version 0.2.2, avec l'inclusion de la langue espagnole et la détection automatique de la langue. Comme de plus en plus de personnes dans le monde entier utilisent ce programme, la sélection actuelle de langues devient limitée. La version 0.3.3 de DISMTools prévoit la prise en charge du français. Bien que je connaisse un peu le français, je ne connais pas les traductions exactes des mots utilisés dans le programme ; par conséquent, DeepL sera utilisé de ma part.

(Yes, that was part of DeepL)

If French translations have been completed before this version is released, more translations might be possible.

And more is to come

These are the features that are being worked on right now but aren't the only changes to be made. Of course, user feedback still matters, so please report feedback.