Boot environment created from WinRE may fail to start in certain situations

When booting into a boot environment created using WinRE, you might encounter a message saying "winpeshl.ini file exists, however..." in the command prompt window, and this may prevent you from using the boot environment.

Details

When starting a boot environment created with WinRE, you might see a command prompt window and find that the boot environment doesn't run as expected.

In fact "winpeshl.ini" file exists, however, none of the commands normally started.
This may be caused by syntax error or because the executable file name may be invalid.
For further details, please refer to the manual.

Causes

The problem might be related to an update program from Microsoft addressing the security vulnerability "CVE-2023-24932" in Secure Boot. This issue can occur when the WinRE setup in Windows is updated through Windows Update. It may happen regardless of whether the boot environment was created on the same PC or not. 

Workaround

Use Windows ADK to create boot environment.

Please note that DeployUSB does not support ADK version 10.1.25398.1 (released in September 2023).

Reference article Windows ADK – Support for Windows 11 Version 22H2

Target Products

- Boot Environment Builder

- ActiveImage Deploy USB

(31622128686489)