A lot of people think that because BDD and MDT are free products they are not eligible for support from Microsoft. This question seems to crop up quite often and people are often surprised when I point out the truth! So, in true A-Team spirit (i.e...

I am very happy with the progress of the deployment guys blog so far. Hopefully you all agree that we are providing useful content to help you with deployment. But don’t forget our old blogs :). They contain heaps of great content that is still very relevant...

The SCCM 2007 Operating System Deployment components use the Windows Automated Installation Toolkit (WAIK) for creating, managing, and deploying Windows Imaging (WIM) images. SCCM 2007 setup installs the Windows Vista RTM WAIK (WAIK 1.0) during installation...

One of the things that you may want to do during a build or deployment process is turn off the Windows Vista sidebar for the period of the process and then turn it back on again at the end. This can be for a number of reasons including that you don't...

When injecting drivers using the "Auto-apply Drivers" task you can filter the drivers that are injected based on the hardware type. The MDT documentation identifies a method of doing this but it his requires an update to the task sequence every time you...

I thought that since Richard Trusson offered you the chance to meet a Deployment Guy in the UK that I should offer a chance to meet one in the US. So if you want to come and meet another one of the Deployment Guys and talk deployment here's your chance...

I am often asked what the best way is to manage drivers with both BDD/MDT and ConfigMgr. With this in mind I thought I would create two blog posts dealing with this topic. The first post covered ConfigMgr and the second (this post) BDD/MDT driver management...

When developing a build it is often useful to have it in debug mode. Debug mode is when log content is echoed to the screen during the build and all the logs, including variables.dat, are copied to the c:\windows\temp\bddlogs folder on completion. Ben...

If you want to come and meet one of the Deployment Guys and talk deployment here's your chance. I will be helping out at the Microsoft UK Windows Server 2008 TechNet Road show on April 30th in Manchester at the Odeon. I am not presenting so you will have...

I have had a number of emails and comments requesting the location for the video walkthroughs featuring BDD 2007 Lite Touch and BDD 2007/SMS 2003 Zero Touch Setup, so I have re-posted them to the Deployment Guys SkyDrive for download: The BDD 2007...

I like the lite-touch installation (LTI) feature of MDT, it think it's great and is very impressive as it allows clients to easily see the benefit that they will gain by using MDT to create and deploy their images. I can go on-site with a customer to...

So - The latest update to Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and BDD 2007 make them both Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008-Ready! Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2008-Unified Tools and Guidance for Desktop and Server Deployment Automation. Download here...

Dan Cunningham's Workstation Migration Assistant (WMA) is a visual wrapper for the User State Migration Tool , designed to simplify the capture / restore process for  end-users, and at the same time being highly configurable so that it can be customised...

Are you struggling with setting up SCCM 2007 Operating System Deployment and integrating MDT? - I have created a video walkthrough that shows you how to: Setup the server environment for SCCM 2007 OS deployment Configure the SCCM 2007 Site Settings...

Have you ever created a build and had to pop up a message to the user/technician? - or had to start an HTA application to request some kind of user input during the build or deployment process? If you have then you will know that the task sequence window...

Are you struggling with setting up MDT Lite Touch? - I have created a video walkthrough that shows you how to: Add operating systems, applications, drivers and packages to MDT Configure Office 2007 into the build process Create a MDT Lite...

Take a look at the image below, which is a fairly common scenario for a company; let's call them Contoso. Contoso has multiple offices around the country that all connected to their head office, some with high-speed network connections and others with...

In this post I am going to talk about a solution I put together for a customer around OSD and application installation by querying a collection. Anyone who has used Zero Touch Installation will be familiar with the ability to install applications from...

So over the next few weeks, I will be presenting a mini series of scripts that may useful in your deployments. All of the scripts will be BDD/MDT specific - meaning that they can be run from the task sequencer and will have the correct format for using...

This post has been superseded by an updated post found here: http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys/archive/2009/10/29/configuring-default-user-settings-full-update-for-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx . Please update any links or favorites...

I am often asked what the best way is to manage drivers with both BDD/MDT and ConfigMgr. With this in mind I thought I would create two blog posts dealing with this topic. The first post (this one) will cover ConfigMgr and the second BDD/MDT driver management...

An oft asked question is how do I reboot a computer at the end of the Task Sequence in BDD 2007 LiteTouch? One of the more popular answers is to edit the LiteTouch.wsf file. I must admit I am not a fan of 'hidden' reboots nor of editing the core BDD scripts...

"The Deployment Guys" is a blog focused on deployment. "The Deployment Guys" is a combined effort.   There many different blogs out there with useful deployment information. This is great but it can be difficult to keep track...

Hi all, I thought I'd post a tip on this shiny new blog that we've created just to get the ball rolling! We have high expectations for the content on this page, we now need to live up to them! Anyway, the following is something I see in a lot of my...

Jon Bennett has released the latest version of the GImageX tool via the Autoit website. GImageX is a graphical user interface for the Microsoft ImageX command line tool supplied with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK). The latest version...