Right seriously, this can't be that hard. W7 deployment

Django x2 · 12 Aug 2010 at 15:55

Ok, We have WDS and I captured an image with WDS (Windows 7, Av and Office, a few tweaks, etc).

Then, I sysprep'd it.

Now, I want to unattend the install with a simple answer file but I can't seem to find how to do this.

I've even exported the image, opened it in WAIK WSIM, created an answer file, saved it, pointed to it in WDS and still it just carries on asking me for information.

What am I doing wrong, or, is there a much much easier way?

Thanks

Penguin · 12 Aug 2010 at 16:41

I've just about finished our Win7 role out & i used Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 with WDS which seemed to do quite a lot of it for me

It Was simple enough for my first time doing such a thing, there's quite a few guides on the interwebz to help too.

Django x2 · 12 Aug 2010 at 18:56

whats all this about deployment shares though, seriously, is that needed?

brainchylde · 12 Aug 2010 at 23:25

We use/used SCCM. When I did try the unattended stuff with WDS it was a bit ropey - takes a lot of work but you can get there in the end. With SCCM I found it a lot easier - but we had other uses for SCCM too. To use it just for OSD is probably overkill.

Like I said - WDS is possible but it takes a lot of work - plenty of niggles as I recall.

Django x2 · 13 Aug 2010 at 09:26

I'm going through MDT which kicks out a nice unattend file. I could, in theory, just use this. All this makes WDS seem pointless though. I suppose a simple script to join the machine to the domain, select language, etc isn't too hard but I want minimal to zero user action

brainchylde · 13 Aug 2010 at 13:01

WDS and MDT are different things. You use MDT, as I understand, to generate the bits needed so that you can do ZTI deployment with WDS. MDT is optional though as you can still use WDS without it.

Penguin · 13 Aug 2010 at 15:14

brainchylde said:
WDS and MDT are different things. You use MDT, as I understand, to generate the bits needed so that you can do ZTI deployment with WDS. MDT is optional though as you can still use WDS without it.

Yep i setup our install like this. Configured the OS, office etc through MDT & put the boot image into WDS the only interaction I have is the initial go button & typing in a PC name.

Oh i did run into a bug with using the MAK key in MDT i had to add custom tasks to insert the key & activate it (The initial deployment was very small to test & get the staff used to Win7 & Office 2010 so couldn't use KMS at the time)

Django x2 · 13 Aug 2010 at 17:18

So, I've put MDT into capture mode and booted the LiteTouch ISO. It's installed Windows 7 and I've stuck Office on there and MSE, etc. Can I domain join at this stage or not?

Also, once I've finished. Do I run sysprep? How does MDT know that i've run sysprep and then do the capture?

Penguin · 13 Aug 2010 at 23:50

Lucero said:
So, I've put MDT into capture mode and booted the LiteTouch ISO. It's installed Windows 7 and I've stuck Office on there and MSE, etc. Can I domain join at this stage or not?

Also, once I've finished. Do I run sysprep? How does MDT know that i've run sysprep and then do the capture?

Yep i installed everything I wanted in my base image, made sure i ran the sysprep for my AV & Office 2010.

I think i connected it to the domain just so it was easier to capture the image.
(I used this guide to setup most of my deployment http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Deploying-Windows-7-Part11.html)

Then when i was deploying my syspreped image i edited my rules.ini inside MDT to join the domain & do a few other things.