Update 2026-01-13: 2601.1 UI Preview is now available - click the link to get the build and check out the Youtube walk-through.

Using Full Flash Update (FFU) files to speed up Windows deployment

What if you could have a Windows image (Windows 10/11 or Server) that has:

• The latest Windows cumulative update
• The latest .NET cumulative update
• The latest Windows Defender Platform and Definition Updates
• The latest version of Microsoft Edge
• The latest version of OneDrive (Per-Machine)
• The latest version of Microsoft 365 Apps/Office
• The latest drivers from any of the major OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft) (yes, the latest, not some out of date enterprise CAB file from years ago)
• Winget support so you can integrate any app available from Winget directly in your image
• ARM64 support for the latest Copilot+ PCs
• The ability to bring your own drivers and apps if necessary
• Custom WinRE support

And the best part: it takes less than two minutes to apply the image, even with all of these updates added to the media. After setting Windows up and going through Autopilot or a provisioning package, total elapsed time ~10 minutes (depending on what Intune or your device management tool is deploying).

The Full-Flash update (FFU) process can automatically download the latest release of Windows 11, the updates mentioned above, and creates a USB drive that can be used to quickly reimage a machine.

Getting Started

• Download the latest release (2505.2 is the latest release based on the doc below; 2511.1Preview is based on the UI - updated docs are coming for the UI build). Recommend to download the UI build and watch the Youtube video and read the docx below to understand how the build script works.
• Extract the FFUDevelopment folder from the ZIP file (recommend to C:\FFUDevelopment)
• Follow the doc: C:\FFUDevelopment\Docs\BuildDeployFFU.docx (doc is for 2505.2; UI docs are in development)

YouTube Detailed Walkthrough

The first 15 minutes of the following video includes a quick start demo to get started. Below the video are a list of chapters. This video was taken with the 2407.2 build. Features released after that will not be demonstrated in the video.

Chapters:

00:00 Begin

03:21 Quick Start Prereqs

07:19 Quick Start Demo

14:12 Script Parameters

17:22 Obtaining Windows Media

25:55 Adding Applications

26:59 Adding M365 Apps/Office

29:21 Adding Applications via Winget

34:59 Bring your own Applications

36:01 Customizing InstallAppsAndSysprep.cmd

38:34 Demo - Application Configuration

49:43 Drivers

55:39 Automatically downloading drivers

57:28 Microsoft Surface drivers

58:55 Dell drivers

01:01:45 Lenovo drivers

01:03:16 HP drivers

01:05:25 Bring your own drivers

01:06:24 Demo - Drivers

01:11:55 Multi-model driver support

01:13:21 Device naming

01:18:30 Device enrollment

01:21:43 Autopilot

01:24:57 Provisioning packages

01:26:54 Custom WinRE

01:29:59 Demo - Putting it all together (Deep dive)

01:32:06 Downloading Lenovo 500w drivers

01:33:28 Downloading apps via Winget

01:36:54 Downloading Office, Defender, Edge, OneDrive

01:38:15 Building the Apps.iso

01:39:08 Applying Windows to the VHDX

01:40:16 Downloading and applying cumulative updates

01:41:44 Building the VM

01:48:13 Capturing the FFU

01:53:38 Creating USB drive

01:58:41 Deploying FFU

02:11:48 Troubleshooting

02:14:30 EDU Endpoint Office Hours