README.md

Extract the windows major and minor build numbers from an ISO file, and automatically sort the iso files.

Features

• Parse multiple ISO files from a directory.
• Detect the Windows build number and OS language.
• Sort and rename the ISO files in folders by OS major and minor builds.

Examples

• Automatically sort and rename the isos from a directory by major and minor build numbers.

  ./SortWindowsISOs.py --iso-dir ./isos/ --archive-dir ./archive/
  

• Only get the major and minor build numbers of an ISO.

  ./SortWindowsISOs.py --iso ./isos/Win10_21H1_x64_English.iso
  

Usage

$ ./SortWindowsISOs.py -h
usage: SortWindowsISOs.py [-h] (-i ISO | -d ISO_DIR) [-a ARCHIVE_DIR] [-v]

Extract Windows Build number from ISO files. v1.1

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i ISO, --iso ISO     Path to iso file.
  -d ISO_DIR, --iso-dir ISO_DIR
                        Directory containing multiple ISOs to parse.
  -a ARCHIVE_DIR, --archive-dir ARCHIVE_DIR
                        Archive dir. (default: False)
  -v, --verbose         Verbose mode. (default: False)

How it works

In order to extract the Windows version from an ISO, we first need to mount the ISO file and open its content. In the ISO, there is a ./sources/ folder containing a Windows imaging (WIM) image in ./sources/boot.wim. When we uncompress this archive, we get a lot of files, but one file at the root of the archive stands out: '[1].xml'.

boot$ ls -lha
total 52K
drwxrwxr-x 5 podalirius podalirius 4,0K janv. 18 00:17  .
drwxrwxr-x 4 podalirius podalirius 4,0K janv. 18 00:17  ..
drwx------ 8 podalirius podalirius 4,0K mars  19  2019  1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 podalirius podalirius 3,9K janv. 18 00:16 '[1].xml'
drwx------ 8 podalirius podalirius 4,0K mars  19  2019  2
drwx------ 2 podalirius podalirius  32K janv. 18 00:16 '[DELETED]'

This file is a XML file containing information about the images contained inside the ./sources/install.wim file. It contains all the information we need to know which major or minor build this ISO file is. Here is an extract of the '[1].xml' file:

<WIM>
    <TOTALBYTES>4461218778</TOTALBYTES>
    <IMAGE INDEX="1">
        ...
        <WINDOWS>
            <ARCH>9</ARCH>
            <PRODUCTNAME>Microsoft® Windows® Operating System</PRODUCTNAME>
            <EDITIONID>ServerStandardEval</EDITIONID>
            <INSTALLATIONTYPE>Server Core</INSTALLATIONTYPE>
            <SERVICINGDATA>
                <GDRDUREVISION>0</GDRDUREVISION>
                <PKEYCONFIGVERSION>10.0.17763.719;2016-01-01T00:00:00Z</PKEYCONFIGVERSION>
                <IMAGESTATE>IMAGE_STATE_GENERALIZE_RESEAL_TO_OOBE</IMAGESTATE>
            </SERVICINGDATA>
            <PRODUCTTYPE>ServerNT</PRODUCTTYPE>
            <PRODUCTSUITE>Enterprise</PRODUCTSUITE>
            <LANGUAGES>
                <LANGUAGE>en-US</LANGUAGE>
                <DEFAULT>en-US</DEFAULT>
            </LANGUAGES>
            <VERSION>
                <MAJOR>10</MAJOR>
                <MINOR>0</MINOR>
                <BUILD>17763</BUILD>
                <SPBUILD>737</SPBUILD>
                <SPLEVEL>0</SPLEVEL>
                <BRANCH>rs5_release</BRANCH>
            </VERSION>
            <SYSTEMROOT>WINDOWS</SYSTEMROOT>
        </WINDOWS>
        <NAME>Windows Server 2019 SERVERSTANDARDCORE</NAME>
        <DESCRIPTION>Windows Server 2019 SERVERSTANDARDCORE</DESCRIPTION>
        <FLAGS>ServerStandardEvalCore</FLAGS>
        <DISPLAYNAME>Windows Server 2019 Standard Evaluation</DISPLAYNAME>
        <DISPLAYDESCRIPTION>(Recommended) This option omits most of the Windows graphical environment. Manage with a command prompt and PowerShell, or remotely with Windows Admin Center or other tools.</DISPLAYDESCRIPTION>
    </IMAGE>
    ...
</WIM>

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. Feel free to open an issue if you want to add other features.