Open Command Prompt during OSD (WinPE)
Typically a simple thing to do, but something that I have spoken to a few engineers who don’t know about this handy little trick. During OSD, pressing F8 will open up a command prompt window. From here you can run various diagnostics and, crucially, you can open CMTrace, from there you can interrogte the SMSTS.log in real time. Worth adding….with a command prompt window open in OSD will prevent reboots from taking place, which can be very helpful!