If you have ever done OSD, then chances are you have had to open up CMTrace a time or two to look at the smsts.log file. CMTrace displays one of the most annoying pop up boxes of all times and it is usually hiding behind the running task sequence dialog window: “Do you want to make this program the default viewer for log files?”

The answer is yes for the millionth time! Wouldn’t it be nice if it just did this automatically and never asked you again? If I had to guess, I bet you are shaking your head yes. For this post, I am going to show you how to modify your boot images so that it never asks you this annoying question again while running in WinPE.

Several years ago (back in 2009) I developed a solution on how to automatically open CMTrace (called Trace32 back in those days) for a debug task sequence. I finally got around to blogging the solution a few years ago and it is called ConfigMgr 2012 OSD: Automatically Open SMSTS log. This contains the important registry keys that we need to set in order to bake this into our boot images (and thus eliminating these three steps for the WinPE phases).

1. The first thing we need to do is create a directory that we can use to mount our boot images (for example, MD d:\mount).
2. Next we need to mount the boot image. This can be done using dism (be sure to run it from an elevated command prompt that has dism in the path – like the Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment short cut under Windows Kits). Select the boot image you would like to modify, I am using the default x86 boot image (in this example Configuration Manager is installed in D:\Program Files\):
   Dism /mount-wim /wimfile:”D:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\OSD\boot\i386\boot.wim” /index:1 /mountdir:D:\mount
3. Now we need to load the DEFAULT registry hive from the WinPE image. In my other blog post, we are creating the key in the HKEY Current User, however, since this is an offline registry, we are going to set it in the HKEY User hive which is what HKCU loads defaults from:
   Reg load HKU\winpe d:\mount\Windows\System32\config\default
4. Now that we have the offline registry loaded, we can create the entries that we need. We will create the following registry keys that causes CMTrace to launch that annoying pop up box if they don’t already exist:
   Reg add HKU\winpe\Software\Classes\.lo_ /ve /d Log.File /f
   Reg add HKU\winpe\Software\Classes\.log /ve /d Log.File /f
   Reg add HKU\winpe\Software\Classes\Log.File\shell\open\command /ve /d “\”x:\sms\bin\x64\CMTrace.exe\” \”%1\”” /f
   NOTE: I used to put CMTrace in the Windows\System32 directory, but this is no longer needed since x:\sms\bin\i386 (use this path above for 32-bit boot images) and x:\sms\bin\x64 are now in the path now and ConfigMgr places the proper architecture of CMTrace in these locations by default. Also, be careful of smart quotes if copying and pasting.
5. Next, unload the WinPE registry:
   Reg unload HKU\winpe
6. Now we need to unmount the WIM file and commit the changes:
   Dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:d:\mount /commit
7. In the Configuration Manager Console, select the boot image and update the distribution points. Generate new boot media based on the modified boot image, boot up a system (or PXE boot) and test by opening up a command prompt and typing CMTrace.

If everything worked right, CMTrace will open up without asking you “Do you want to make this program the default viewer for log files?”, as it already knows the answer. Repeat for other boot images you would like to modify. Here is a link to a text file that can be downloaded and renamed to .bat.

If you think this should automatically be in Configuration Manager, head on over to User Voice and vote for Stop CMTrace from asking us if we want to use it as the default viewer for log files in WinPE.

Originally posted on https://miketerrill.net/