[WDS] Tips for beginners

[petroz]

My understanding of this is as follows now.

1) Set up WDS for capture and deploy (Done)

2) Make an ideal XP image with driver repository on C: and sysprep it with minisetup enabled and Re-Seal.

3) Boot from PXE and capture the image to the server.

4) Specify a WDSClientUnattend.xml for the server which will pick the deply image and select the .WIM in the correct image group after partitioning the drive. The partitioning is working and the right image .wim is being pulled down so I'm pretty sure I'm right to here.

5) Place an sysprep.inf in the correct folder to automate the installation of the image. It gets placed on the boot drive once the .wim is extracted ready to control mini setup.

It is placed in \\wdsserver\REMINST\Images\Imagegroup\imagefilenam e\$OEM$\$1\sysprep

6) Boot PC from PXE and it should arrive at a ctrl+alt+del to log on screen after 20mins ish connected to the domain and ready to go.

7)tear out hair because it doesn't.

I did not find it necessary to have a driver repository when using WDS and WIM's. Think of wim images as ghost images, they retain all drivers. Also never had to place my sysprep anywhere other than the root of the WIM image.

You can drasticlly simplify your process by adding a couple of batch files that use tools like netdom(binding), reg add/delete, curl (for renaming via DB's) and last but not least Great Work on the Unattended.XML!!!

[plexer]

Can someone do an idiots guide to getting WDS setup for imaging and deploying XP machines?

Ben

[ChrisH]

Ok I need to inject some Network card drivers into the boot.wim so I assume I should be using the Vista Drivers?

[ChrisH]

Ok I have been injecting alsorts of drivers to no avail. Has anyone done any Compaq 6820s Laptops?

[ChrisH]

Thats ok just all ignore me see if I care!!!!! I finally got the network going as it wasnt doing it automatically I had to type in startnet.cmd .

[Gibbo]

Can someone do an idiots guide to getting WDS setup for imaging and deploying XP machines?

Ben

I'm going to have a try at following this:

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/window...tml#post109236

What requirements does the server running WDS need? Do it need AD, DHCP and DNS or can it access these services from other servers? I'm testing it on a vanilla 2K3 server.

[ChrisH]

It can access all those services on another server.

[Gibbo]

Just finished testing an image upload and download, it all worked very well.

The only gripe I have is that it seems to take ages to bring up the "deploy" interface. It looks all very "Vistay" (because it was taken from the Vista BOOT.WIM?), is there any way to speed this up, maybe even customise it so it automatically defaults to UK English?

[Reaper]

I've just started trying to implement this and have spent a day or so pouring over various step by steps etc.

We are running WDS on a Server 2003 box and I can PXE boot to it from one PC without a problem, but there is another PC which completely ignores it. From what I can see the settings are correct for both.

Another question, is there a way to get the automated name generation to do incremental letters rather than numbers?

[browolf]

WDS, that deploys XP to x102', p320s, other newer fujitsu's works perfectly.

trying to deploy to X101 and it bombs out of litetouch.wsf / wpeinit
discovered the /debug:true mode on it

the log is

Successfully changed C: to M:
No task sequence is in progress
Successfully cleaned up existing C:\Minint directory
Starting minimized command prompt
ZTI ERROR - Unhandled error returned by Litetouch: (-2147023441)
ZTI ERROR - Unhandled error returned by Litetouch: (-2147023441)

any ideas?

[browolf]

we're figuring that the x101s dont have enough memory.

next problem is, something is set wrong somewhere as it only does refresh type deployments, if i try and do a "new computer", it doesnt join it to the domain.
tried to get a DP Type page in the wizard but it seems to be ignoring SkipDeploymentType=NO.

[DrPerceptron]

Does anyone store their WDS Images on a mapped network drive?

If they do, does it have any major problems (other than the obvious one(s))?

[Reaper]

So you have your images on ServerA and WDS on ServerB?

Or is the Images folder just a Network Share?

[DrPerceptron]

It's a virtualised WDS box now and there's not a lot of space left in the disk groups... but the SAN we have has plenty of space...

Just wondered whether it's feasible to use that space easily?

EDIT: Seems WDS does not let you do it without looking at iSCSI...

[Reaper]

When you add an image to WDS it copies it into it's internal folder structure and that can't be changed (as far as I know). Also (and this is just observation I haven't read anything to back this up) WDS seems to adjust the image into different files and if you have two images that are near identical, it takes all the identical stuff and merges that into one file and will then create separate files for each image based on the differences.

If you look in your images folder on WDS it has a big file called Res.RWM and then smaller files with the image name e.g. OctImage01.wim


Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.