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In my previous post , I talked about using a small RAMdisk to speed up the process of generating MDT boot images.  But the trial version only supports RAMdisks up to 4GB in size and only on client OSes.  One comment posted to that blog pointed out that StarWind also has a free RAMdisk available...

One of the slow operations in the MDT Deployment Workbench is the initial “Update deployment share” process that has to completely generate new Lite Touch boot images.  I always assumed that this was slow due to the amount of I/O being generated by the update process. Recently, ATI and Dataram released...

I was working on a separate blog posting (to be posted soon) that referenced the “Deploy to VHD” support that was present in MDT 2012 and improved in MDT 2012 Update 1 and wanted to include a link to that previous blog.  Except there was no previous blog – I guess I never did one… So let’s start...

Apparently I was so wrapped up in the MDT 2012 Update 1 development process that I forgot to talk about one of the areas that consumed weeks of my time before the MDT 2012 Update 1 release: improvements to the “Roles and Features” logic. In MDT 2010 and MDT 2012, we had a task sequence action to “Install...

For those of you using ConfigMgr 2012, you may be interested in this.  When ConfigMgr 2012 Cumulative Update 1 was released, it was discovered that you could no longer create a new task sequence using MDT 2012 Update 1 and the “Create MDT Task Sequence” wizard.  When you tried, you would get...

Traveling from New Zealand to Australia for the TechEd Australia conference, I had some additional time to work on the troubleshooting guide, which is now starting to feel more like a book. I added two sections to this document, one reviewing all the possible return codes from the MDT scripts (yes, there...

A few people have asked about the changes made in MDT 2012 and MDT 2012 Update 1 in regards to the MDT database.  There aren’t that many changes, but here they are: MDT 2012 RTW Removed obsolete properties for Lite Touch: SkipAppsOnUpgrade. Added new properties for ConfigMgr 2012: SMSTSPreferredAdvertID...

I’ve been doing a session at various events over the years called “Troubleshooting Windows Deployments” or something similar to that. Today is the latest, presenting the session at TechEd New Zealand in Auckland. It’s been tweaked some over the years, but the basic flow has always...

A few years back, I posted a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2010/06/11/selection-profiles-with-the-lite-touch-deployment-wizard.aspx describing how to modify the Lite Touch wizard so that the deployment wizard shows a different list of applications based on the task sequence that...

As part of the MDT installation process, you need to run the “Configure ConfgMgr Integration” wizard to add the MDT components into the ConfigMgr console and database. But what if you want to automate that process? Fortunately, that’s pretty easy to do using PowerShell, as the integration...

Here’s a quick suggestion for speeding up MDT-created task sequences in ConfigMgr 2007 or ConfigMgr 2012: Find your MDT toolkit files package source folder. In the “Scripts” folder inside that folder, find the “ZTISCCM.wsf” script. Look for a line like this: wscript.sleep 30000 Remove that line or comment...

I mentioned in the blog post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2012/07/21/mdt-2012-update-1-always-applying-images-with-imagex.aspx that MDT 2012 Update 1 no longer uses SETUP.EXE to install Windows 7 and above. One side effect of this is that $OEM$ folders are no longer going to be copied...

I was talking to some people yesterday at the TechMentor conference in Redmond and about MDT, and somehow during the conversation I got a mental image of the task sequence progress dialog that I couldn’t shake (and that wasn’t really even related to the conversation, go figure). A while back, we made...

A long time ago, I worked in corporate IT.  One day I started looking for new challenges and interviewed with Microsoft for a job in Microsoft Consulting Services, helping customers with their Windows deployment processes.  I distinctly remember talking about all the “challenges” (putting it...

You probably noticed that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 RTM’d today (see http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/08/01/windows-8-has-reached-the-rtm-milestone.aspx and http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/01/windows-server-2012-released-to-manufacturing...

One of the challenges with previous versions of the UDI wizard was extensibility.  With MDT 2010 Update 1, there was no way to add a new page.  With MDT 2012, you could do this by writing C++ and C# code, which at least made it doable, but beyond the capabilities of most organizations. ...

If you have installed MDT 2012 Update 1 Beta 1, you might have noticed a new wizard page in the MSI installer: When enabled, this option enables us to collect more information about how MDT is being used, which we can leverage to improve MDT in the future.  No personally-identifiable data is collected;...

Another new feature in MDT 2012 Update 1 is the ability to call System Center 2012 Orchestrator runbooks from within a task sequence.  This works with Lite Touch deployments, ConfigMgr 2007, and ConfigMgr 2012.  Using this capability, you can tie external processes into your task sequences...

In MDT 2012, we added support for DaRT integration into an MDT Lite Touch boot image, as well as a new monitoring feature that integrated with DaRT to make remote control into Windows PE easy.  See http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2011/11/28/mdt-2012-new-feature-dart-integration.aspx...

Since we released MDT 2012 Update 1 Beta 1 a few weeks ago, I’ve received a few panicked e-mail messages from people asking “what happened to the UDI task sequence, it’s gone.”  Don’t worry, it’s still there.  What we have done in MDT 2012 Update 1 is merge the ZTI and UDI task sequence together...

In MDT 2012 RTW that released back in April, we included support for DaRT 7, making it easy to add the DaRT components to Lite Touch boot images.  See http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2011/11/28/mdt-2012-new-feature-dart-integration.aspx for more details on that. With MDT 2012 Update...

The MDT 2012 Update 1 release is primarily intended to add support for deploying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.  For ConfigMgr 2012, it’s the SP1 release that adds similar support.  So if you want to start testing out the Windows 8 deployment process, you’ll want to be using MDT 2012 Update...

In MDT 2012 RTW, we supported PowerShell 2.0 in a task sequence, which worked well for what was released at the time.  But with Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows PE 4.0 (the version in the Windows 8 ADK), PowerShell 3.0 is now used.  MDT 2012 RTW didn’t support that.  With MDT...

Another change you might notice in MDT 2012 Update 1 is that Lite Touch deployments never use SETUP.EXE.  That doesn’t result in any real change in functionality, as we still do the equivalent steps: Applying the image using ImageX.exe. Servicing the image using DISM, which injects drivers, software...

One of the questions I received after presenting a session at TechEd Europe was about encoding any clear-text passwords that you might place into the Bootstrap.ini file, so that if someone looked at the file they wouldn’t be able to tell what value it represented. I suggested that it would be fairly...