See also: Deploying Windows 8: Unattended Installation Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS) – Part I In the first post of this series we’ve already reviewed the initial steps for preparing Windows Deployment Services (WDS), adding boot and clean Windows 8 images into the environment, an also how to capture a reference Windows 8 image for deployment. Now, it is […]
See also: Deploying Windows 8: Unattended Installation Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS) – Part II For a while now I’ve been preparing articles in this blog regarding deploying operating systems, and especially unattended deployments. I’ve started with Windows Vista deployments and the initial version of Windows Deployment Services (Post I, Post II and Post III); the moving forward with […]
See also: Deploying Windows 7 Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS): Step-by-Step – Part I After reviewing Post I about installing and configuring Windows Deployment Services, we’ve also review the process of capturing a customized Windows 7 image and upload it to WDS. To image is already available and we can use it to deploy on workstations from a PXE […]
See also: Deploying Windows 7 Using Windows Deployment Services (WDS): Step-by-Step – Part II We had a good look about the possibilities about Windows deployment; regarding Windows 7 we’ve completed a guide using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT 2010 beta) to capture and deploy unattended installations of Windows 7 with Office 2007 (Post I, Post II and Post III). […]
For those that have been using Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) 2.0 released recently (download link here) or using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1, that works only with WAIK 2.0 (check these articles of mine about MDT 2010: Post I, Post II and Post III); maybe you’ve noticed that the management tools that were included with WAIK 1.1 (and 1.0) disappeared in this new version. These tools were consolidated by one command-line: DISM.exe (more info on Post I about MDT 2010). Meaning that the Windows PE management (like customizing, adding drivers or inserting Hyper-V integration components to those images) that you executed on previous versions of WAIK, has significant changes. On this post we’ll be reviewing how to add the Hyper-V Integration Components to a Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) image, including the new Windows PE 3.0. Why should I need to add the Hyper-V Integration Components to Windows PE? The Integration Components of Hyper-V are a set of drivers that are a significant performance change that you can apply to virtual machines for them to be able to install synthetic devices instead of emulated devices. Some of the drivers that are installed using the Integration Components are: Video driver, network driver (with this you avoid using Hyper-V’s Legacy Network adapter), storage driver, VMBUS (transport for synthetic devices), time sync (time synchronization with the host), etc. Adding Hyper-V Integration Components As I mentioned before, I prepared a set of […]
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. […]
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)
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Technology and user experience enthusiast, book author, customer-focused in the Dell Technologies family. Sharing a few thoughts around evaluating, designing, implementing and managing IT solutions
Augusto Alvarez 