My dear colleague Johan Schrewelius has created some awesome tools for making it easier to upgrade/service Windows 10 to Windows 10 releases using a Task Sequence. We will start this blog series with a post on one of the tools UPGBackground. For those of you who use OSDBackground we can call it OSDBackgrounds little sister ? You will recognize the debug feature which is the same in both. It can be downloaded here: https://onevinn.schrewelius.it/
What does UPGBackground do then?
UPGBackground will cover the entire screen, regardless if a user is logged on or not. In short this it is a full screen application that disables certain system key combinations such as ctr+alt+del and Alt-F4. Except for a debug password, it requires no configuration and it will survive a reboot at is launched as a Service. This will prevent any curious end-user to log on before the upgrade is complete and possible break the upgrade or loose data. It supports multiple screens as well and great feedback from the community has made it even better. If you downloaded it before please download it again as some bugs have been solved.
Debug feature
There is a builtin debug mode that is password protected the same way as OSDBackground is. The Password can be configured for example using a Collection Variable called “UPGDebugPassword” as shown below.
When UPGbackground then runs you can right click in the top-left corner and a password prompt will appear.
Once the password is entered the following options are displayed.
Language Support
UPGBackground shows only three lines of text, default language is English as shown above. The language support is limited to one at the time. Place a simple .txt file in the same folder as the .msi file named “UPGBackground.txt” as shown below and it will be copied along to the installation folder. UPGBackground will detect the file and try to use its content line for line.
Example content of the UPGBackground.txt file in Swedish
Task Sequence sample
To launch it we can use TSLaunch which is another tool Johan has written. I will cover TSLaunch in detail in a later post, with possibly a video as well as you can do so many things with it. We install the UPGBackground in the Task Sequence as an application as show below.
As soon as it is installed it will launch automatically.
To uninstall it when the upgrade is complete or has failed, we use a SMSTSPostaction that simply runs the uninstall command as shown below. In the sample below I have placed the SMSTSPostaction variable in the end of each section because we have seen that the SMSTSPostaction command is executed on every reboot in some SCCM versions. It should be fine to add it directly after the install command if everything works as intended.
In case of Task Sequence failure
- In the event the TS breaks, not fails, but completely breaks – the application has a built-in selfdestruction function and will eventually (2-4 minutes) uninstall itself.
- If a failure or misconfiguration causes the Task Sequence not to start at all UPGBackground will close and uninstall itself in 12-14 minutes.
To sum it up here is a little animated .gif that will show how it works.
Hello Jörgen,
This tool seems great! Is it compatible with MDT tasks sequence?
If not, is it adaptable to it ?
I made a quick translation into French. Would you like me to send it to you?
Regards
Alexis
Hi,
We have not tested it with MDT and don’t expect it to work…
A french translation would be great!
/Jörgen
With more than a year’s delay, here at last is the announced translation.
I’ve added the one from TSLaunch.
https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=62e734bd-6cb2-b011-f748-da95435fe75e
Thanks again for sharing these tools.
Best regards,
Alexis
Are you adding TSLaunch.exe in the TS or a separate package that runs? Im having problems getting the TS to launch immediately after the user select upgrade now. “I will cover TSLaunch in detail in a later post” Looking forward to seeing it thanks ahead of time.
Hi Jörgen, I’ve tried to use UPGBackground (v. 1.0.18166.1) with TSLaunch, but it is unable to uninstall, which effectively bricks the device. I somehow did manage to close the process, but trying to uninstall through add-remove programs don’t work either.
Hi,
There is a built-in timer so just leave it for 12 minutes and it will terminate itself and uninstall itself.
Regards,
Jörgen
Hi,
ist ist possible that the current version of the msi don´t copy the upgbackground.txt into the install directory? We renamed the txt file from _upgbackground.txt to upgbackground.txt but the nothing happen. The txt file is in the same directory as the msi. We already testet the new Version 1.0.18.272.1 but same behavior.
regards,
Patrick
I really don’t like this tool. Chances for failure are much bigger than for success.
I just had a case where the TS was started, UPGBackground started, and after 2h nothing was happening.
DEBUG mode didn’t start. I could click the left top corner as much as I wanted to, it didn’t do a thing.
I waited 1 more hour, but nothing was happening.
I did a hard shutdown, started again, and UPGBackground started again. I can’t get passed it and I can’t access DEBUG.
I would think that after the hard shutdown, the task sequence was broken and didn’t start again, but UPGBackground didn’t self-destruct after 12 min.
In fact, I left it overnight, and next day it was still spinning.
I then had to boot into recovery and delete the EXE’s with CMD to get past this thing.
I’m not quite sure why this needs to launch after a reboot?
If you start a Upgrade TS, UPGBackground should launch, once the upgrade procedes and reboots for the first time, the default Windows 10 Upgrade progress will be shown (similar to upgbackground) and once it’s at logon screen it is supposed to be upgraded. Or rolled back if failed.
So in my opinion, UPGBackrgound should not launch again after a reboot. It makes no sense at all.
Hi,
It depends what you are doing, we often upgrade Bios/drivers and need multiple reboots to solve. If you get “stuck” as you did the most simple way is to start Services.MSC on another machine and connect over the network and stop the service.
Regards,
Jörgen
I understand that.
I’ll try to add a step in my TS to disable Auto-Start of the service.
That way it will not start after reboot.
I’ve tested with another machine and had the same issue with UPGBackground.
It works perfectly fine with only TSLaunch. Upgrade succeeds without any issues.
But when UPGBackround is launched the device never reboots and I don’t have access to the DEBUG menu to troubleshoot.
Right click in left top corner doesn’t work.
Hi Jorgen,
I have a question about UPGbackground, is there any logging? Because I have a machine that I upgraded from 1703 to 1809 and UPGbackground kicked in succesfully but the TS successfully finished.
However the UPGbackground didn’t selfdestruct and is running for a couple of hours.
Hi, where do we set the parameters for not checking for cable, but just use what ever connection which is available? br Lasse
Hi is there any chance to adapt this tool for mdt? Can it work for an os installation right after the task sequence choice?
For the language .txt File try to install the app as a Package