Enable F8 Command Line Support for legacy Boot Images in ConfigMgr 2012 R2

In the event that you need to import a WinPE 4.0 or 3.1 boot image into ConfigMgr 2012 R2, you may want to enable the F8 command line support once you have imported the boot image. Since the servicing capabilities for such boot images are disabled, we need to go outside the ConfigMgr console to make this kind of change.

Information

This is what it looks like when you have imported a legacy boot image (WinPE 4.0 or WinPE 3.1) into ConfigMgr 2012 R2:

In my lab environment I’ve imported a clean WinPE 4.0 wim file and named it WinPE 4.0 (x86) as you can see in the picture above. In order to enable the F8 command line support for this boot image, we could either use wbemtest or PowerShell. I’m not a fan of the wbemtest utility for various reasons, and I prefer using PowerShell when possible. Before we go ahead and execute the PowerShell script, we need to know what we’re going to do. In the SMS Provider, there’s a class called SMS_BootImagePackages. For each boot image in your environment, there’s an instance with a set of properties. The property that we’re interested in is called EnableLabShell. If you examine this property, you’ll notice that it’s a lazy property (see this great article by Trevor Sullivan, PowerShell MVP). In the picture below, I’m using WMI Explorer to examine the instance of my boot image:

As shown in the picture, my boot image has a PackageID of CAS00020. This can be found in the ConfigMgr console by navigating to Software Library, Operating Systems and Boot Images. See picture below:

Since the EnableLabShell property has a value of False, we need to change it to True by using PowerShell. In the script that we’ll be using, we need to reference the instance of the boot image object directly. If we don’t do that, things will go bad.

Download the script

I’ve made the script available on the TechNet Gallery, and it’s available for download here.

Using the script

The script has two ways it can be executed in. The first one is where it will only query for the Boot Images. To actually make any changes to the instances, you’ll need to specify the -Commit switch.

Querying for Boot Images

1. Download the script to C:\Scripts.
2. Open an elevated PowerShell console and run the following command:

.\Set-CMBootImageEnableCommandLineSupport.ps1 -SiteServer CAS01 -SiteCode CAS -BootImageName "Win"

Note! Remember to change the SiteServer, SiteCode and BootImageName parameters for your own environment.

Committing changes to Boot Images

1. Download the script to C:\Scripts.
2. Open an elevated PowerShell console and run the following command:

.\Set-CMBootImageEnableCommandLineSupport.ps1 -SiteServer CAS01 -SiteCode CAS -BootImageName "Win" -Commit

Note! Remember to change the SiteServer, SiteCode and BootImageName parameters for your own environment.
When you have executed the script and committed, remember to run the Update Distribution Points for the specified Boot Image(s).
You should now be able to press F8 in your legacy WinPE boot images!