Utilise Netsh Wlan in WIn PE 4.0

We have been working with unattended domain joins using SCCM 2012. We used to use a command line step in the OSD to join the machine to the local wireless network prior to domain join.
The syntax used was netsh wlan connect [localwirelessnetwork]
This would then allow us to connect wirelessly to the domain. However in PE 4.0 the wlan functions of netsh are not available for use.
I have read the instructions here and here and many others but no-one seems to have a complete solution for this.

I've managed to import all the .dll and dll.mui files correctly as explained in the second link and wlan is showing up but when I try to execute a command using it it complains that wlansvc is not started. If I try to do a Net start wlansvc it complains that it is not recognised.

Has anyone managed to include the wlan functionality in Win PE 4.0 or worked out another way around this? Maybe using Powershell would be an option but I haven't been able to work out a way to implement that, there's nothing in what I've read that indicates there is the ability to do this, most Powershell cmdlets simply reference netsh.

If anyone has any ideas, solutions, pointers it would be most appreciated.


Typically we'll use LAN, in some situations we have to use USB though, haven't joined to the domain on the USB builds as they were 100% offline (I think that was MS' recommendation or a sccm requirement, I can't remember).

What about opening a powershell prompt and trying to start the service via cmdlet? So it would be something like

$(Get-Service | where name -eq wlansvc).Start

that will for sure tell you if it's there (and make sure you're error is not just because net start is acting up), and also in 7 the name of the service is wlansvc and not wlancgf, was that a typo or is this different in WinPE 4.0?