Windows 10: ReflectDrivers Setup Option for In-Place-Upgrade on encrypted media

[German]Just a hint for a Windows 10 setup (if necessary as in-place upgrade), which should be executed on encrypted media (e.g. Veracrypt drive). There is a setup option ReflectDrivers, which can be used from Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607).

What the problem?

If a Windows installation or feature update is running, the target partitions should be unencrypted – especially if they are encrypted with third party tools such VeraCrypt. So it is necessary to decrypt the system disk before installation, install Windows 10 and then encrypt the partition again.

ReflectDrivers Setup Option helps

The approach outlined in the paragraph above can be avoided by using the ReflectDrivers setup option. Microsoft introduced this option in Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) or later and described it in the document Windows Setup Command-Line Options.

Specifies the path to a folder that contains encryption drivers for a computer that has third-party encryption enabled.

Setup /ReflectDrivers <folder_path>

This setting is new for Windows 10, version 1607.
Make sure that <folder_path> contains only a minimal set of encryption drivers. Having more drivers than necessary in <folder_path> can negatively impact upgrade scenarios.

So you can specify a path to the folder where the encryption driver is located for the option during setup. This approach was described in the VeraCrypt forum to support an upgrade for VeraCrypt encrypted hard drives. The poster wrote in April 2018:

I have implemented compatibility with Windows 10 upgrades through SetupConfig.ini and ReflectDrivers mechanisms and I have uploaded installer for version 1.23-BETA0 that contains this to this site.

Now automatic upgrades will work out of the box when system encryption is on and manual upgrades can be performed by typing:

setup.exe /ReflectDrivers "C:\Program Files\VeraCrypt" /PostOOBE C:\ProgramData\VeraCrypt\SetupComplete.cmd

I have done tests using upgrades from 1703 to 1709. The only issue I encountered is if the system is partially encrypted in UEFI case but this is a marginal case and it should never happen in practice.

I am looking to users who are willing to test this version in order to confirm its reliability before rolling it out. Thank you.

So for VeraCrypt there is an approach to upgrade Windows 10 to a new version. (via)