"Why deployment is so hard?", “Where can I find all related information?” What else I need to consider?” Those or similar questions are normal during my customer projects. After getting the same questions again and again, I’ve decided to create a Mindmap with all common links...

Often times when you are presenting applications to install in the LiteTouch wizard of MDT, you may want to present configurations for each of these applications. These could include installing application features, configuring parameters like computer name, language or parameters that link to other...

One of the great features of MDT 2010/2012 is the ability to create a media based deployment  – this media based deployment can be placed on a USB based memory device (HDD or Fob) or onto a DVD. This allows the MDT based deployment to run from this removable media which is great for badly connected...

Often the simplest tips are the best ones, so here is one I have been using pretty much ever since I started working with MDT. When working as part of a team in the same MDT environment, you can often run into issues when various people are modifying the task sequence, or debugging a process that...

As some of our regular readers will have seen, I released version 2.0 of the MDT Debugger a short time ago. This version 2.1 is just a minor update with the following changes/improvements: Fixed a bug in the output window that caused some process output not to be captured and displayed Added...

Back in March of last year, I posted the MDT Debugger as a time/stress and frustration saving tool useful for debugging the scripts you develop for use with MDT. Over the last year, I've used the tool in every MDT project that I have worked on, which has given me the opportunity to (very slowly) address...

In a previous post , I described the first of two methods on how to drastically reduce the time (and stress/frustration!) it takes to debug an MDT task sequence, by eliminating all the tasks that work. In this post, I’d like to close this topic with the second of the two methods on how to achieve...

I don't know about you but it frustrates me that, to test certain parts of a task sequence, I have to run the entire task sequence from the very beginning, formatting the drive and installing the WIM image. This can be a process that can take an hour just to reach the point I want to test, causing a...

I managed to beat fellow Deployment Guy Michael Murgolo to the honour of the first post of 2011, so it is my responsibility to wish all our readers a happy new year! I hope all your 2011 deployment projects go well, and we've all got some good posts lined up over the coming months which hopefully will...

A request that I have had from a number of customers lately goes like this: “ we would like to have MDT 2010 download and apply all critical and security updates during image engineering from the Internet, but the device we are using as a reference machine is in the lab network which doesn't get Group...

Thanks you all for your patience waiting for the full set of deployment walkthrough videos to be posted on TechNet Edge . As per my previous post , over the past few months I have been updating the deployment walkthrough videos and I am pleased to announce that the whole video series has now been posted...

When working on a client site, the laboratory where I have the MDT server(s) set up along with the test machines is not always in the same place as where I am. This could be for a variety of reasons, but usually it is that the lab area is either too cold to stay in (aggressive AC being used!) or just...

I know that many people used the Walkthrough videos that I created around Lite Touch deployment with MDT and Zero Touch deployment with Configuration Manager – as I got so many great emails about them. Over the past few months I have been updating the videos that I originally released as well as adding...

My customer is deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 using MDT Lite Touch Installation. The wanted to have a way to select the operating system Roles and Features during the Deployment Wizard in a way similar to how the Install Roles and Features step works in the task sequence editor: To that end,...

edit: fixed error in command line example. Thanks to Aurélien Bonnin and FoW for pointing it out. edit 2 : this version has been updated, please search the blog for the latest version. When creating and configuring an LTI deployment solution there is one thing that always bugs me immensly...

Adding 802.1x functionality to WinPE has been a hot topic for a while now. And, given the amount of traffic and comments that my earlier post generated when I linked to the newly released updates for WinPE that add this long awaited support, it seems that a lot of people are interested in implementing...

The below list is a list of the most common mistakes made when creating a LiteTouch task sequence. While not an exhaustive list, it might help to improve your deployment experience when using MDT to create LiteTouch deployments. 1.) Hard-code paths to files/scripts in the task sequence, or inside...