Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Upgrade Windows BYOL WorkSpaces

On your Windows Bring Your Own License (BYOL) WorkSpaces, you can upgrade to a newer version of Windows using the in-place upgrade process. Follow the instructions in this topic to do so.

The in-place upgrade process applies only to Windows 10 and 11 BYOL WorkSpaces.

Prerequisites

Considerations

The in-place upgrade process uses two registry scripts (enable-inplace-upgrade.ps1 and update-pvdrivers.ps1) to make the necessary changes to your WorkSpaces that enable the Windows Update process to run. These changes involve creating a (temporary) user profile on drive C instead of drive D. If a user profile already exists on drive D, the data in that original user profile remains on drive D.

By default, WorkSpaces creates the user profile in D:\Users\%USERNAME%. The enable-inplace-upgrade.ps1 script configures Windows to create a new user profile in C:\Users\%USERNAME% and redirects the user shell folders to D:\Users\%USERNAME%. This new user profile is created when a user logs on the first time.

After the in-place upgrade, you have the choice of leaving your user profiles on drive C to allow your users to use the Windows Update process to upgrade their machines in the future. However, be aware that WorkSpaces with profiles stored on drive C can't be rebuilt or migrated without losing all of the data in the user's profile unless you back up and restore that data yourself. If you decide to leave the profiles on drive C, you can use the UserShellFoldersRedirection registry key to redirect the user shell folders to drive D, as explained later in this topic.

To ensure that you can rebuild or migrate your WorkSpaces and to avoid any potential problems with user shell folder redirection, we recommend that you choose to restore your user profiles to drive D after the in-place upgrade. You can do so by using the PostUpgradeRestoreProfileOnD registry key, as explained later in this topic.

Known limitations

Summary of registry key settings

To enable the in-place upgrade process and to specify where you would like the user profile to be after the upgrade, you must set a number of registry keys.

Perform an in-place upgrade

To enable in-place Windows upgrades on your BYOL WorkSpaces, you must set certain registry keys, as described in the following procedure. You must also set certain registry keys to indicate the drive (C or D) where you want the user profiles to be after the in-place upgrades are finished.

You can make these registry changes manually. If you have multiple WorkSpaces to update, you can use Group Policy or SCCM to push a PowerShell script. For a sample PowerShell script, see Update your WorkSpace registry using a PowerShell script.

If you haven't set the PostUpgradeRestoreProfileOnD registry key to 1, the user profile is regenerated by Windows and placed in C:\Users\%USERNAME% after the in-place upgrade, so that you do not have to go through the above steps again for future Windows 10 and 11 in-place upgrades. By default, the enable-inplace-upgrade.ps1 script redirects the following shell folders to drive D:

If you redirect the shell folders to other locations on your WorkSpaces, perform the necessary operations on the WorkSpaces after the in-place upgrades.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any issues with the update, you can check the following items to assist with troubleshooting:

Update your WorkSpace registry using a PowerShell script

You can use the following sample PowerShell script to update the registry on your WorkSpaces to enable in-place upgrades. Follow the Perform an in-place upgrade, but use this script to update the registry on each WorkSpace.

# AWS WorkSpaces 1.28.20
# Enable In-Place Update Sample Scripts
# These registry keys and values will enable scripts to run on the next reboot of the WorkSpace.
 
$scriptlist = ("update-pvdrivers.ps1","enable-inplace-upgrade.ps1")
$wsConfigRegistryRoot="HKLM:\Software\Amazon\WorkSpacesConfig"
$Enabled = 1
$script:ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
 
foreach ($scriptName in $scriptlist)
{
    $scriptRegKey = "$wsConfigRegistryRoot\$scriptName"
    
    try
    {
        if (-not(Test-Path $scriptRegKey))
        {        
            Write-Host "Registry key not found. Creating registry key '$scriptRegKey' with 'Update' enabled."
            New-Item -Path $wsConfigRegistryRoot -Name $scriptName | Out-Null
            New-ItemProperty -Path $scriptRegKey -Name Enabled -PropertyType DWord -Value $Enabled | Out-Null
            Write-Host "Value created. '$scriptRegKey' Enabled='$((Get-ItemProperty -Path $scriptRegKey).Enabled)'"
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Host "Registry key is already present with value '$scriptRegKey' Enabled='$((Get-ItemProperty -Path $scriptRegKey).Enabled)'"
            if((Get-ItemProperty -Path $scriptRegKey).Enabled -ne $Enabled)
            {
                Set-ItemProperty -Path $scriptRegKey -Name Enabled -Value $Enabled
                Write-Host "Value updated. '$scriptRegKey' Enabled='$((Get-ItemProperty -Path $scriptRegKey).Enabled)'"
            }
        }
    }
    catch
    {
        write-host "Stopping script, the following error was encountered:" `r`n$_ -ForegroundColor Red
        break
    }
}