Microsoft Validation OS is a lightweight, fast, and customizable Windows 11-based operating system that you can use on the factory floor to diagnose, mitigate and repair hardware defects during Windows device manufacturing. Validation OS boots into a Command Line environment to increase reliability on the factory floor and supports running Win32 apps, smoothing the transition from early hardware bring-up to retail OS and apps development.
This is an intriguing Windows variant I’d never heard of before. Validation OS boots to a command line and sports a basic UI framework, and is supposedly capable to run Win32 applications, but if the early reports on forums are anything to go by, it’s currently quite broken and effectively useless since Win32 applications do not actually run. As such, I’m not entirely sure who or what this is for, or if this is a very early release that needs a lot more work.
In any event, it’s free, so no harm done in giving it a go.
It says in the article Thom. It’s for OEMs to test their new hardware. Just a little digging on the linked website indicates you’ll need to manually add support for a lot of the stuff win32 apps might rely on like gdi+ or .net. it’s a bare minimum OS designed to run a test suite at the factory and stamp a QA passed sticker on the thing. Trying to use it as a desktop would just be painful.
We have come full circle – they have reinvented DOS..
(^_^)
If you want to see a reinvented DOS, look at Nano Server in Server 2016. It uses a framebuffer for display, but the display is a single 80×25 character mode session – no windowing support at all. Since it’s running a full kernel, it can run many background processes/threads, but interactivity is fully single tasking. Because it’s so limited, it implements a Win32 subset – porting Win32 programs to it is possible but applications that haven’t been explicitly ported are unlikely to work.
https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2021/10/17/fun-with-nano-server/
Same as Microsoft Factory OS, or is this something different?
I believe they are 2 different animals. Microsoft Factory OS is based on Windows Core OS (WCOS), an internal definition intended to be a common core for future OSs. This includes a GUI stack. As far as I can tell, Microsoft Validation OS is CLI only – no GUI stack. It is also not necessarily based on WCOS. And from their description (“Microsoft Validation OS is a lightweight, fast, and customizable Windows 11-based operating system that you can use on the factory floor to diagnose, mitigate and repair hardware defects during Windows device manufacturing.”), I would be super excited to see some renderings of this “factory floor” where Microsoft Factory OS is installed on the fly for diagnosis.
They are separate. But the naming kind of suggests that Validation OS is one (or more) step closer to a real-world user than Factory OS – but not consumer level. Or maybe it is a newer version designed to replace Factory OS?
MS have offered a variety of solutions over the years for industrial control systems that should be perfectly suited to the sort of equipment I run, but they never gain much traction with end users. In that broad category of kiosk type OS that Factory OS falls in you would think they should dominate process control and the like, but they don’t, I’ve never understood why, it’s more about people than the product.
Actually, the time might be right for this to proliferate for end users, I can see something like MS Factory OS working well with various micro-services to deliver the flexibility users want with the reliability OEMs need. Especially as end users become more literate in the ways of Linux and IIoT.
Given most of the hardware I work on is ready to run in 3 to 5 seconds, the rest of the boot time is dedicated to the OS and in some cases a secondary suite of calibration and testing often lasting several minutes.
Techs tend to run a known known for testing, they are unlikely to configure a debug machine for every work centre, and are more likely to plug in their own laptop or a specifically configured desktop for such tasks. That is all about trust and predictability, but I’ve known that to go wrong as well when the Tech’s own hardware is not as they think.
I tried this out, and it definitely gives Nano Server vibes.
The key difference between this and other cut down versions is that it doesn’t include shell32.dll or comdlg32.dll. These are needed surprisingly frequently by fairly simple programs (like notepad.) Unlike Nano, it includes a full user32.dll and advapi32.dll. Like Nano, being willing to cut this hard has benefits for things like RAM requirements – this edition boots in 256Mb RAM with no paging file, and takes about 512Mb of disk space. Not quite as small, but still…small.
My command line software (http://www.malsmith.net/yori/) worked fairly well though. It intentionally only statically imports from kernel32.dll, and only the set of functions that NT 3.1 provides, and dynamically loads the rest. Although some functions I was using aren’t there (like ShellExecute), the bulk of it work. In particular edit (http://www.malsmith.net/edit/) works, which is important when notepad does not.
For anyone trying this, there’s a huge delay in launching the command prompt. I don’t know why, but if you’re looking at a mouse cursor, be (very) patient.
This validation OS will be to get hardware vendors out of making product key free Windows PE images for system diagnose/validation on the factory floor. Yes it technically legal in many countries todo this. Of course once this is done Microsoft could release Windows that you must have a product key or it will not install.
The factory OS version of Windows is not designed third party software. Lets say you want to test out some ODM motherboards RGB system at a test station the reality the Microsoft factory OS is not able todo this. So guess what Windows PE disc is used most of the time without a Product key. Who cares if this is ping Microsoft all the time about a unlicensed copy of Windows being used.
I do wonder how functional Microsoft Validation OS is combined with wine/reactos made DLL files. I could see case were we see applications start appearing bundled with shell32.dll or comdlg32.dll from reactos/wine with applications that are in fact being used on the factory floor.
I tried the Validation OS for months. I have installed on it my Laptop’s drivers and all optional components. From my testing, I have found certain apps to be working (Such as Crystal Disk Mark 8.0.4, System Information) but most don’t (i.e. 7-Zip GUI, Firefox). However, all of the apps I managed to launch do not fully work and CMD Settings cannot be changed through the GUI. In addition, many CMD apps such as 7Zip CLI do work.
Some apps appear to crash on startup with a Fatal Error dialog complaining that it failed to create common controls (Such as Git Gui). In addition, even if some do launch, some parts do not render properly. No 32-bit support is given in that OS and displays with the Windows 95-2000 theme albeit with the colors of the Aero theme and broken parts (Checkboxes and Radios are indeed displaying broken), making the very first time we see the Classic Windows Theme since its removal from Windows 8 and above
In the end, this OS cannot replace the Windows Recovery Environment included in a Windows Installation because it can’t even launch System Restore. We hope to find out more Win32 apps that will run on that OS one day.