I was prompting a tablet user for a password in WinPE prior to performing a recovery routine. To get Windows OSK to appear was a lot more difficult that it should be. In my search for a portable on-screen keyboard, I found FreeVK. Its free and works in WinPE. The only caviat is that it needs to be triggered from WinPEShl.ini and NOT from Startnet.cmd.
Link to FreeVK.exe: http://freevirtualkeyboard.com/
Here is my WinPeShl.ini:
[LaunchApps] AppPath="wpeinit.exe" AppPath="cmd.exe","/c powershell.exe -command Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass" AppPath="cmd.exe","/c start powershell.exe -file .\SearchAndApplyWRecovery.ps1" AppPath="%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\tools\freevk\freevk.exe"
* Compliments to the guys @ http://www.911cd.net/forums/ !
/Brian G
Cheers for this. Unfortunately many tablet devices nowadays only support UEFI PXE. UEFI only supports 64bit WINPE which FreeVK does not support. FreeVK can only run in 32-bit WINPE.
Salad,
I agree. I still don’t get why Microsoft doesn’t make this easier on us scripters to get a sw keyboard in WinPE.
/Brian G