Need a Software Keyboard in WinPE, FreeVK to the rescue..

By | September 26, 2013
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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

2 thoughts on “Need a Software Keyboard in WinPE, FreeVK to the rescue..

  1. Salad Fingers

    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.

    Reply
    1. Brian Gonzalez Post author

      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

      Reply

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