In this video you will learn how to deploy Windows 7 the easy way. We walk through a light touch deployment of Windows 7 and show all the steps that are needed to make it happen using WDS, MDT and AIK. We start at the beginning of the process and do not stop until we have a client computer completely deployed.
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Step By Step:
In case this walk through was not enough detail for you... Here is where you can get some more help on these topics:
Assess your company’s readiness Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit
Analyze application compatibility Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) Version 5.5
Prepare infrastructure for deployment
Getting Started
Preparing the Windows Deployment Services Server
Install MDT 2010 and required components
Preparing the Deployment Environment
Microsoft Deployment Preparing for LTI Tools
Create a deployment share Microsoft Deployment Workbench Imaging Guide
Build a task sequence that installs Windows 7 Modifying Task Sequences
Create boot images Preparing the Deployment Environment
Copy boot images to a portable storage device Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk
Deploy Windows 7 to each computer Running the Windows Deployment Wizard
Activate Windows 7 Windows Volume Activation
Dan
I love the post. It is full of good info for a guy like me who is trying to figure out this WDS stuff. The question I have is what is the need for recapturing the reference computer. Why dont you just use the intial image for deployments? Are there advantages? I am adding your blog to my favorites in hopes that you will do a followup diving into more WDS details.
Thanks
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You do not need to recapture the image. I have showed recapturing the image for people to understand that the capability is there. Recapturing an image is especially important if you want to add additional steps in the middle of the process.
Thanks Bro ...awesome job. looking forward for more from u
thanks bro
Anuj
Can the Windows Deployment Services role and AD setup stuff be skipped and the rest of the steps followed for non-AD deployments?
Dan,
Excellent walk through. One question, at what point can I add applications on the reference computer so that they can already be installed on the target computer?
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Anything that is security/identity based will be wiped during the sysprep stage. However anything that does not tie to security/identity will remain. You cannot make changes to the syspreped image [ok, major changes] so you will need to install the applications before syspreping the reference computer.
So installing antivirus software, email software should be ok
Hi fantastic resource, it all makes sense now, but im having trouble accessing the silverlight video now it was working fine but doesnt seem to want to play today are there any issues with the file,,
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It is working for me... you might want to try it from a differnt machine
At 13:42 you say that you can join the domain, but you wish not to do that at the moment. Well.. I was willing and unfortunatelly, joining the domain somehow triggered the problem - there was no sysprep after installation! I wasted two days for experiments before i realized, that when you do not join the domain at this particular stage, sysprep works beautifully. But thanks anyway for the tutorial - helps a lot!
---- Very sorry this caused you trouble -- You are correct! When you sysprep a machine. It blows away all the security identification data (SID). You should not join the domain until after you deploy the image. If you do join the domain with the image to deploy applications, you would need to remove the domain before sysprep'ing or it can cause problems. When you remove the machine from the domain it can also cause other problems so the only SAFE way to deal with the images is to join the domain after the image is deployed. ...DAN
Thanks a lot for the precious info.
One thing I still have difficulties to understand though is the difference between MDT and WDS deployments. I understand MDT is good for working on the Windows images, and can be used to deploy theses images from a network share. Then why use WDS if MDT already offers the online deployment ability ?
Hope you'll find the time to answer,
All the best
This is a great walk through Dan, especially for someone just getting into WDS and MDT...
Would you how to capture a pre-staged reference computer?
This post is really save my life.
One thing I would like to ask. is there anyway to handle the computer name in AD properly?
What I want to do is when PXE boot the new computer, it prompt for the computer name for the first time.
If in the future, if i need to reimage the computer, I can get the same computer name from AD (just like the way how RIS works).
Dan, what if there is an unattend file? How do you incorporate that in?
Useful info. One question, i didn't see that you add any install image. When you work on Workbench, install image is already "merged" in Litetouch boot image so that you don't need to add any install image? many thanks
am really enjoying your ur theory keep on duin dat bless you
Can anyone help me or point me in the right direction? I had setup MDT 2012 and WDS on a 2008 R2 standard server. It was working great and I had no problems with PXE boot, sysprep and capture or deploying images. The server stopped working due to issues with VMWare and I had to rebuild it. I decided to use Server 2012 this time at the suggestion of someone who is using Server 2012 and claims an increase in performance over 2008. Here is the problem:
Once I reinstalled MDT 2012 and WDS, I now have problems PXE booting from some models of Dell - we are primarily using Dell desktops - computers. Specifically 580s and GX 620s. Has anyone expierenced this problem? The error is I believe a 5602 error - "no boot filename received". Can someone offer some suggestions? Thank you.
Tony