MDT Sucks

[anything I don't mind]

Unfortunately i have to create another build for deployment and thought i would try WDS and came across MDT as i used sccm at another site and thought (after hitting my head against the wall for a few days) that eventually it worked ok.

But now i've tried MDT and WDS and sccm looks brilliant in comparison. I don't think i've ever come across more poorly designed software in my entire life. Maybe the WAIK is probably more poorly designed and the MDT was meant to alleviate that problem, figures.

I am thinking of just doing it manually with WDS because the MDT component is worthless.

Anyone use WDS and not MDT due to MDT being atrocious?

 

[anything I don't mind]

MDT is meant to make it easier but its like a stripped down and free version of SCCM so you can imagine how poorly designed it is.

You can't even do a basic capture of a reference image without wasting 6 hours searching google for error codes like 0x80004005.

Ill probably just end up using wds by itself at this point.

 

[anything I don't mind]

Well I have a desktop with an Intel 82579LM network card and the standard drivers even after being injected 100% correctly and boot image updated, refuse too work. I am not alone either the forums are full with people with same issue with this network card and its not like a rare network card either its about one of the most common network cards on the market, its intel generic onboard.

I got 32bit winpe working by injecting a whole list of OS drivers but 64bit still not working. Ive read that people suggest doing it in vmware but i can't see how that will help my issue as i still need a 64bit boot image too boot on these pcs or i won't be able to deploy an image to it, well as far as i understand.

Its just atrocious that MS cant just use generic drivers, stick clonezilla in and it works out of the box. Why can linux get network cards working but microsoft just throws out worthless errors, its because they don't real world test their products and they don't think about using it.

Another poor example is windows creates a 100mbyte partition during installation, when try capture an image it tries to copy files to the first partition and they don't fit so it errors and there is no way around that, you have to remove this partition or MDT won't be able to capture the image, its simply pathetic.

Microsoft effort level 0

You might think well its free. Wrong i had the same problems with sccm and that costs £1000s

 

[anything I don't mind]

Ive added the drivers just fine but the 64bit boot image nic drivers don't work. Ive read that with most recent version you can use 32bit boot image to deploy 64bit image so that is the route im going down at the moment.

The problem with the capture is that i was not running it from within the OS. The initial guide i had gave the impression that it should be run from the boot image. But ive since found the correct guide that shows you run the script from within the OS and then it reboots and capture the wim. Similar to sccm some what except sccm you create a capture disk and run that from within the OS.

Im getting there its just annoying and if i can't get the 32bit boot image to work with 64bit os then im probably going to make the image in a vm.

 

[anything I don't mind]

I did it in vmware in the end because it was not working and it worked first time, without having to inject any drivers. So ill just use vmware to make and capture the image and integrate the drivers afterwards.