Jan 24

Written by:
1/24/2012 2:06 PM 

In the previous WinPE version 2.x/3.x you could provide the below settings in the Unattend.xml file to set the screen resolution:

<Display>
  <ColorDepth>16</ColorDepth>
  <HorizontalResolution>1024</HorizontalResolution>
  <RefreshRate>60</RefreshRate>
  <VerticalResolution>768</VerticalResolution>
</Display>

The Problem:

But if you try to do that in WinPE 4.0 it fails, and you will see the following entry in the wpeinit.log file:

2012-01-24 14:01:11.619, Info      WPEINIT is processing the unattend file [X:\unattend.xml]
2012-01-24 14:01:11.697, Info      ==== Initializing Display Settings ====
2012-01-24 14:01:11.712, Info      Setting display resolution 1024x768x16@60: 0xfffffffe
2012-01-24 14:01:11.728, Warning   Setting the display resolution failed; this error is being ignored
2012-01-24 14:01:11.728, Info      STATUS: SUCCESS (0x00000001)

The solution:

Turned out that WinPE 4.0 (developer preview of Windows 8) didn't like 16-bit color depth, so when changing to 32-bit it works perfect

<Display>
  <ColorDepth>32</ColorDepth>
  <HorizontalResolution>1024</HorizontalResolution>
  <RefreshRate>60</RefreshRate>
  <VerticalResolution>768</VerticalResolution>
</Display>