Deployment

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part III

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IMPORTANT: Updated versions from this series using Windows 7 + Microsoft Office 2010 in automated deployment with MDT 2010 can be found here: Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part I Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part II Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part III   This is going to be the last part (at least for now) for this step-by-step guide for customizing and deploying Windows 7 images with MDT 2010. On the previous posts we’ve learned how to run the firsts configurations on MDT, adding operating system files and creating a task sequence for the reference image (Part I); and also adding Office 2007 to the reference image and making it a silent installation (Part II). The third post it’s going to be just to deploy the reference and customized image, and then capture it into a .wim file, that we can later deploy using MDT or add it to Windows Deployment Services (WDS). Deploying Reference Image Since we already have our boot environments, ISO and WIM files; and that we have the Windows Deployment Services role installed, I’ll start using it: I’m going to add the LTI boot image to WDS that will let me create and capture the reference image. Note: You can also use the ISO file too boot from a CD […]

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Deployment

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part II

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IMPORTANT: Updated versions from this series using Windows 7 + Microsoft Office 2010 in automated deployment with MDT 2010 can be found here: Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part I Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part II Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part III On the first post of this series, we’ve managed to install MDT 2010 and its requirements, prepare distribution share and task sequence, add Windows 7 image to use it as reference and create the deployment point. We are now going to add Office 2007 as an application to be deployed included in the OS image and complete the environment to generate the reference image. The process of adding an application like Office 2007 it is quite simple, the only trick is to get the application to install silently (or unattended) without requiring for user intervention , we’ll see how that works. Adding Applications to MDT 2010: Office 2007 We’ll add the application using also a simple wizard, but the interesting part comes when you get the chance to modify default settings on the Office 2007 package: 1. “Deployment Workbench” > “Distribution Share” > “Applications” > “New”. 2. Select “Application with source files”. 3. Complete the data about the application. 4. Select the “Source Directory”. Since I have it on the hard drive, […]

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Deployment

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1: Using MDT to Prepare, Install and Capture customized Windows 7 Images – Part I

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IMPORTANT: Updated versions from this series using Windows 7 + Microsoft Office 2010 in automated deployment with MDT 2010 can be found here: Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part I Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part II Deploying Windows 7 + Office 2010 Using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 – Part III Microsoft Deployment Toolkit team released the first beta of their next version: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1 (you can access to the Beta program from Microsoft Connect and download the build). This new version includes several improvements, but perhaps the most important ones are related to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 compatibility. Some of the New Features Support for deploying: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Hard Link Migrations using USMT 4 (User Migration Toolkit). Integration with new Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) 2.0 toolset such as BCDBOOT and Windows PE 3.0. DISM tool (Dism.exe) included with WAIK 2.0 replace three other tools on previous version: Pkgmgr.exe (Package Manager), Intlcfg.exe (Internal Settings Configuration Tool) and PEimg.exe (WindowsPE Command Line tool ). If you are planning to implement Windows 7 on your environment (check this link about the review I made about Windows 7 functionality) or you want to start to get to know Microsoft Deployment Toolkit in this new version; I’ve prepared this step-by-step guides that will cover […]

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Deployment

Troubleshooting WDS: Event ID 257 – 258 – 266 – 513

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Windows Deployment Services depends and works directly with Active Directory and DHCP, meaning that if any of those two servers are significantly modified, then probably you will not be able to start the WDS service and get the events ID: Event Viewer from WDS Server Event 257: An error occurred trying to start the Windows Deployment Services server. Event 258: An error occurred trying to start the Windows Deployment Services image server. Event 266: An error occurred while to refreshing settings. Event 513: An error occurred trying to initialize provider WDSImgSrv from C:\Windows\system32\WdsImgSrv.dll. Windows Deployment Services server will be shutdown. Disclaimer Please note that the following possible reasons, are related when all those events appear simultaneously and with the same descriptions. Event ID 513 can also appear regarding to a PXE provider error: “An error occurred while trying to initialize provider WDSPXE from C:\Windows\system32\wdspxe.dll. Windows Deployment Services server will be shutdown”. This particular error could happen for several reasons, like installing on the same server a System Center Configuration Manager PXE provider that replaces the WDS. Possible Reasons Those particular errors appeared when there were changes on Active Directory that did not were performed smoothly: – Changing a Global Catalog from Domain Controller. – Shutting down an active Domain Controller. Solution To solve this, you need to insert manually the FQDN of the domain controller working as a Global Catalog. 1 – Open the WDS snap-in and access server properties. […]

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Deployment

Windows Deployment Services (WDS): Unattended Installation Files Examples

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After completing three posts about unattended deployment of full operating systems with WDS (Part I, Part II and Part III), I had pending this post about the examples of the unattended files. So here they are. Note: All of the data about the components and values used on these two XML files, are explained on Part III about WDS Deployment. WDSClientUnattend Download example here. (Change file extension from .doc to .xml to start using it or you can still open it as a Word file). Part of WDSClientUnattend.xml AutoAttend Download example here. (Change file extension from .doc to .xml to start using it or you can still open it as a Word file). Part of AutoAttend.xml Hope that you find it useful! Cheers! Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part I) Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part II) Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part III)

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Deployment

Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part III)

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At this point we’ve already installed and properly configured Windows Deployment Server on Windows 2003/Windows 2008 (Part I); and we created a full image (programs and features installed) on our Windows Vista and uploaded it to the server (Part II); the only thing missing is creating the answer files that will be used on the images to achieve the full unattended installation of our operating system. For those using Windows Server 2003 SP1, we reviewed that among the requirements for WDS installation there was installing Windows Automated Installation Kit. This kit also gives us an important tool for the unattended files creation, the Windows System Image Manager. So, it’s recommended for any other platform used on WDS to download this kit and install the System Image Manager. This tool it’s not a requirement for creating the unattended files. Installing WAIK Preparing the Files Using System Image Manager System Image Manager provides us the way to, using the .wim (or .clg) file for an installation, select the components that are necessary within the answer files. This way we can be sure that the answer options selected are used on the right place at the right time: Open System Image Manager for Start Menu. Click on File and click on Select Windows Image. Select the .wim file that we previously created or just use the file from the installation media (install.wim). You can also select the catalog files (.clg): these are the […]

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Deployment

Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part II)

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Ok then, after completing the first configurations made on the Part I of this guide we can perform a clean but attended network installation of Windows Vista. There are two main steps to take and complete a full image and unattended deployment: 1. Creating the base image to deploy: OS, programs and other special configurations + uploading it to the WDS server. 2. Making an unattended file to be used with that image. Creating the Base Image Note: On this series of posts we are only considering to deploy Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 images. The files used on WDS Native mode as unattended files are only valid to those operating systems, if you want to make unattended deployment with Windows XP or 2003 OS; you will need to use RIS or WDS Legacy Mode. The first step it’s pretty simple, it consists on installing the operating system with all the features, programs and configurations that you want. But there are some considerations first: After you complete the image, there’s a process where you release all the specific data involving the computer where it’s installed, like the Security Identifier (SID), computer name, etc. Here are some of the things that the image won’t keep after the release process: · Computer name· Owner and Company name· SID· Domain or workgroup membership· TCP/IP Settings· Regional and keyboard settings· Specific hardware drivers. This refers to specific computer hardware, like video or audio […]

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Deployment

Installing and Configuring WDS (Windows Deployment Services): Full Images Deployment (Part I)

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I’ve prepared a complete guide to configure a WDS Server on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 to deploy complete operating systems images, this is the first part. In this post I’ll be setting the WDS requirements, installation, first configurations and images needed. Introduction Deploying operating systems it’s always a hard thing to do. Annoying, uncomfortable, but necessary for every environment. Why? Because every desktop computer on every organization has their own life cycle (even servers, a longer one, but cycle at last). Even if your organization doesn’t have many desktops and even if those desktops don’t seem to need an image refresh in several months; the dynamics of today’s technology makes your base operating systems to change: Updates available, service packs, a new version of your organization’s software, newer operating systems, etc. And don’t forget the consequences of any user’s intervention: overloading the hard drive, personal software installation, etc; transforming always into a need to a fresh new installation. No need to keep enumerating things that normally happens; you probably know all of them. Common Base Image Life Cycle The bottom line is that a good and automated system to deploy your full operating systems images will significantly (and I do mean significantly) improve your daily tasks: Making an awkward job of following the installations steps for maybe 2 or 3 hours and transforming it to 30mins of a complete unattended provisioning. Here’s where Windows Deployment Services comes […]

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