This article details the process updating Windows System Image for ggRock, including Windows 2004 and Windows 20H2+ (2020+)
To update ggRock from the currently recommended 1809 to 2004 or 20H2+ versions available now. We also see nothing that would prevent ggRock from updating to the versions past 20H2 (2020) when new Windows versions release.
This feature is supported with ggRock Image Creation Tool 0.80 and newer.
Please make sure to perform stability testing on the new machines by playing games and doing some updates before applying the new image center-wide.
Windows Versions Supported
This update brings about support for latest Windows versions - 2004 and 20H2 (2020). We expect to also successfully support all versions coming after, unless described otherwise.
Windows Editions Supported
We have no reports of any Edition of Windows not being supported by ggRock at the time. Therefore, Editions supported are: Home, Pro, Education, Pro Education, Enterprise
Updating with keeping the data
In most cases you will be able to simply update your existing System Image, thus preserving all of the data currently written to it (installed launchers, games, etc). Here are the steps to update "in place":
Step 1. Connect an empty physical drive to the client machine
Step 2. Boot the Machine via ggRock (PXE)
Step 3. Write the current image to the connected drive using the ggRock IC Tool
Open the ggRock IC Tool, navigate to the Clone Disk tab and select the drive you've installed to be a destination for the current OS. The drive will be formatted.
Leave the checkbox Complete disk transfer unchecked.
Shrinking the System Image to speed up the Update
In case you want to speed up the cloning that ggRock IC Tool does - you can always first shrink your volume using Disk Management utility built into Windows.
Transferring the entire disk
In case there is an issue with cloning the disk you might want to select Complete disk transfer option. This will disable any optimization ggRock IC Tool might want to do and clone the entire disk raw, avoiding any issues that might occur there.
Step 4. Reboot the PC, setting BIOS to boot from the drive
Step 5. Disable update prevention measures and update Windows
Step 6. Reboot to apply the Windows update
Step 7. Disable Windows Defragmentation
Unfortunately Windows enabled Defragmentation after every feature update. To avoid extended writeback sizes we need to disable them after update.
Go to Defragment and Optimize Drives, Change settings, Choose and then deselect all drives, press Ok. Also deselect Automatic optimization for new devices.
Step 8. Generate VHD using the ggRock IC Tool
This step will require you to capture all NIC drivers again, restart the Machine and then create the VHD once all NICs (ignore the Wi-Fi ones if any) are in Configured Network Adapters:
Step 9. Import the VHD to ggRock as a new Image
Updating with a clean image
This feature is supported with ggRock Image Creation Tool 0.80 and newer as well.
In a rare case when updating in place would produce an unusable image you could always turn back to the clean image creation.
You can use this link to download a universal Windows 10 20H2 image:
https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10
Once downloaded, follow the manual for ggRock configuration as usual: