On October 17, 2013 the Windows ADK 8.1 was re-released.
Update #1 October 21, 2013: Record speed update from the Windows documentation team, see the Windows ADK service updates section here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh825613.aspx
Update #2 October 21, 2013: Michael Niehaus also wrote a post today: http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2013/10/21/the-adk-for-windows-8-1-has-been-updated.aspx
I could not find any announcement about the release, or what was changed, but a closer look revealed that the "new" version contained a Patches folder containing updates for many of the ADK 8.1 components. This means that if you downloaded the RTM version of Windows ADK 8.1 prior to October 17, you need to download it again.
Since I could not find any documentation about the changes, I got curious and compared a setup from the original release, to a setup with the new release. It turned out that new release of Windows ADK 8.1 did update quite many things.
The new Patches folder.
The following deployment tools are updated from 6.3.9600.16384 to 6.3.9600.16411.
- ImageX.exe (wimgapi.dll is also updated)
- wdsmcast.exe (Multicast client)
- SUAnalyzer.exe (Standard User Analyzer)
- imgmgr.exe (Windows System Image Manager)
WinPE 5.0 has the following files updated:
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\bootmgr.efi
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\bootmemtest.exe
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\efi\bootbootx64.efi
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\efi\microsoft\bootmemtest.efi
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\bootmgr.efi
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\bootmemtest.exe
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\efi\boot\bootia32.efi
- Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment\amd64\Media\efi\microsoft\boot\memtest.efi
There are also updates made to the following applications:
- USMT 6.3
- Volume Activation Management Tool
- Application Compatibility Manager
- Windows Assessment Toolkit
- Windows Performance Toolkit
Happy Deployment, Johan