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Today I am going to discuss the Surface Pro Firmware and Driver Pack. The Surface Pro Firmware and Driver Pack is a collection of drivers and firmware updates that Enterprise will need if they want to deploy their own custom image to the Surface Pro using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, System Center Configuration...

In today’s blog I am going to explain how you can do an unattended setup of the default Windows 8 Enterprise X64 install.wim to a Surface Pro from a USB drive.   Unattended setups are not new but when you are deploying to the Surface Pro (or any other UEFI system) there are some special considerations...

In today’s blog I am going to cover an issue related to using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Update1 to deploy an image to Surface Pro using media deployment point. Notes: This issue is not specific to Surface Pro and could occur with other UEFI computers. This may be addressed in later version of...

In today’s blog I am going to discuss how to handle booting from a USB drive on a UEFI system so you can deploy Windows.   It is common to create bootable USB flash drives or hard drives so you can boot from them to do various tasks such as Boot Windows PE (WINPE) for recovery purposes Boot Windows...

Hello, Today’s blog will walk you through installing the Volume Activation services role on Windows Server 2012 so you can configure Active Directory Based Activation (ADBA). Initial Configuration of Active Directory Based Activation 1. After installing Windows Server 2012 open Server Manager and choose...

Hi, Today’s blog will walk you through installing the Volume Activation services role on Windows Server 2012 so you can setup a new Windows Server 2012 KMS host. Initial Configuration of a new Windows Server 2012 KMS host 1. After installing Windows Server 2012 open Server Manager and choose “Add roles...

Hi, Today’s blog will cover the options available if you are deploying Windows 8 and/or Windows Server 2012 to an existing KMS activation configuration. It references two other blogs Installing the Volume Activation Services Role in Windows Server 2012 to setup a KMS host Installing the Volume Activation...

Today’s blog is going to cover some issues regarding the installation of MS12-034 (2686509).  When installing this update you may encounter the following error message: Setup cannot continue because one or more prerequisites required to install KB2686509 failed (0x8007F0F4) The existence of %windir...

Many new computers are shipping with the option to boot Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ( UEFI ) instead of standard BIOS.   In today’s blog I walkthrough how I installed Windows 7 SP1 X64 Enterprise on a Dell Latitude E6410 laptop that supports UEFI.   The screenshots are specific to...

Running sysprep Today's blog will cover a common question we get with deploying Windows. The question usually starts as "How many times can I run sysprep"? While the answer is simple it requires a more detailed explanation. When sysprep executes, one of the sysprep providers is responsible for resetting...

Today’s blog will discuss support for UEFI with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and other deployment tools.  First we should discuss why this change is occurring.  Today’s BIOS has been around for a long time.  Some of the limitations include: 16bit code 1mb address space limitation Slow...

With the release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1(SP1) we have also released a new version of the Windows 7 AIK or WAIK.  The SP1 version is more of a supplement to the current version and not a full replacement of the AIK.  The update includes an update to Windows PE...

Today’s blog will cover KMS volume activation and the KMS count. Many times customers will contact us and report that their KMS count is not as high as they think it should be or it is not increasing. You may also see the following error message when you try to activate 0xc004f038:  The Software...

Today’s blog is going to cover an issue we have seen a couple of times now with customers utilizing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to Deploy Windows although it can happen with any deployment tool out there. Issue: During deployment of Windows or even after Windows is deployed you see an Open File...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover a common question we get involving product keys. Many times you may have a product key but you need to find out what type of key it is. We will use the VAMT 2.0 tool to accomplish...

Today’s blog is going to cover some issues around customizing default user profiles when deploying Windows. There are a number of resources available on the CopyProfile topic 973289 How to customize the default local user profile for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008...

Today’s blog will cover scenario where you would like to customize the Start menu and TaskBar(also called SuperBar) as part of your deployment. In Windows 7 the start menu looks like this The top 5 icons in the start menu are not customizable. Note that over time these icons will be replaced by the users...

Today’s blog will cover burning CD/DVD’S in Windows Server 2008 R2. When you are logged into a Windows Server 2008 R2 computer you may notice that you cannot burn a CD/DVD and/or the recording tab is missing from the properties of your CD/DVD drive in my computer. By default accounts other than localsystem...

Today’s blog will cover an issue we have seen with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010.   You may see one or more of the following error messages when generating or updating boot images and other actions in MDT that involve the Lite Touch Images: Unable to mount the WIM, so the update process cannot...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur.   I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover an issue involving KMS activation and deployment of images.     This issue seems to be more prevalent today due to the various tools used to clone images...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur.   I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover an issue involving specifying MAK Product Keys during setup of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.   When deploying a Volume License (VL) version of Windows 7 or...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover a number of issues we have encountered here in support with the following update. These updates will eventually be incorporated into the Knowledge Base article but we wanted to...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover specifying new and updated timezones in sysprep.inf for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. When deploying Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 with a sysprep image you must specify...

My name is Scott McArthur, a Senior Support Escalation Engineer who focuses on deployment issues. My topic for today’s blog entry involves an issue where a customer was deploying Windows Server 2008 by replacing the default install.wim on the Windows Server 2008 media with a custom install.wim.  ...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur. I am a Senior Support Escalation Manager in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover KMS volume Activation. With Windows Vista we introduced 2 methods for activating volume license versions of Windows. Key Management Service (KMS) and Multiple Activation Key (MAK...