Windows OBE / is a stripped down, hardened windows 10/11 x86/x64/arm64 image think of it as a pure bare metal OS.

It’s not an image as per say, more a process of taking an image provided by Microsoft and stripping it in a supported documented manner. No tools, no tricks just pure RTFM stuff.

Origianl	OBE

To get started download any Official Microsoft windows iso preferably the latest with integrated service packs. For this purpose, lets download the official Windows 11 23H3 English International version from [Microsoft Software Download (https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11)] image.

From the downloaded iso Win11_23H2_EnglishInternational_x64v2.iso extract install.wim from the \sources folder into c:\win-11\ for example.

Displays information about the images that are contained in a .wim

Dism /Get-ImageInfo /ImageFile:C:\win-11\install.wim | Select-String Index,Name

Now let’s use Windows 11 Pro which is index 6 and export just that one image to a new WIM. Don’t worry we will change it to Windows 11 Enterprise later on.

Dism /Export-Image /SourceImageFile:C:\win-11\install.wim /SourceIndex:6 /DestinationImageFile:C:\win-11\install_boe.wim

Mount the WIM to a local folder, to start to modify the window image.

Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:C:\win-11\install_boe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\mnt

Before removing or disabling any components it is recommended to first update the images with the latest service. The best way to achive this would be to deploy a test image, go online see what updates are missing, take not of the KB and use that to download from the [Microsoft Update Catalog (https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com). Once the file has been downloaded create a new folder kb under c:\win-11\. Move and rename the MSU files to something easier and slipstream them to the image.

This will add two KB’s and then reset the image base.

Dism /Image:C:\mnt /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\win-11\kb\windows11.0-kb5034467.msu
Dism /Image:C:\mnt /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\win-11\kb\windows11.0-kb5034765.msu
Dism /Image:C:\mnt /cleanup-image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase

Get a list of install packages and remove what’s not needed. See table below for list of Packages/AppxPackages/Features not safe to remove/disable.

DISM /Image:C:\mnt /Get-Packages | Select-String Identity
DISM /Image:C:\mnt /Remove-Package /PackageName:Microsoft-OneCore-ApplicationModel-Sync-Desktop-FOD-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.22621.3155

DISM /Image:C:\mnt /Get-ProvisionedAppxPackages | Select-String Packagename
DISM /Image:C:\mnt /Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage /PackageName:Clipchamp.Clipchamp_2.2.8.0_neutral_~_yxz26nhyzhsrt

Dism /Image:C:\mnt /Get-Features /Format:Table | find "| Enabled"
DISM /Image:C:\mnt /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:Windows-Defender-Default-Definitions /Remove

Unmount WIM

Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\mnt /Commit