TheRobins Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 Morning, I'm sure other people have had to do the same as me regarding imaging tablets with no Ethernet capabilities. I have 30 Acer windows 8 tablets which the previous technician just added the acer images straight onto the network. They are a mess, most of them have broken windows update so I am going to re-image with 8.1. As a test I have tried the built in windows backup solution which quite nicely produces a VHD for my use, Its a painfully slow task but one by one you could have them replicate the image and the sysprep'd ready for deployment. Some reason it has been the slowest backup I have ever seen. The image took 6 1/2 hours to write @ 15GB and restoring test was not much quicker. With there only being 1 USB port on the docking station, I have had to use a USB Powered hub in order to add the USB portable drive, keyboard mouse and USB DVD Drive. So in all, are there any other ways people have managed to re-image these devices. Looking at the firmware for the Iconia W510 they do not support USB Ethernet for boot or Boot from LAN so seems that route is out of the question?
FN-GM Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 I have used tablets with a dock that has an Ethernet port. But you could make a new image and capture and deploy it using CloneZilla on a USB pen drive. 1
BHMS Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 Windows deployment services with USB Hub, USB key with capture or discover boot image for Windows deployment services, USB Ethernet. Also USB keyboard and mouse since WinPE doesn't support the touchscreen. Works quite well, about 30-40 mins per tablet since they arn't the fastest in the world. 1
edutech4schools Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 If it was me I would keep things simple and use CloneZilla Clonezilla - About It is very very simple to setup, it can boot from USB and copy the pc image back to the USB and would do you computers in about 15-20 mins. The other option would be MS image captue 1
TheRobins Posted June 16, 2014 Author Posted June 16, 2014 Thanks All, I was blissfully un-aware for Clonezilla, Looks fantastic and its free, and for this small batch it will be perfect. Sadly just started the windows image restore now which is going to take another 4 hours, once that has finished I will re-capture using clonezilla.
LeMarchand Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 So in all, are there any other ways people have managed to re-image these devices. Looking at the firmware for the Iconia W510 they do not support USB Ethernet for boot or Boot from LAN so seems that route is out of the question? I think you can USB Ethernet boot, but they're very picking about which devices will work - they'll happily use any USB Ethernet device under normal use, but only specific ones for booting. Neither the cheapo one nor the Belkin I have work (. See the last post on this page.
TheRobins Posted June 16, 2014 Author Posted June 16, 2014 I think you can USB Ethernet boot, but they're very picking about which devices will work - they'll happily use any USB Ethernet device under normal use, but only specific ones for booting. Neither the cheapo one nor the Belkin I have work (. See the last post on this page. Thanks the sad thing, with Acer not publicly supporting it you can get through 10 - 15 adapters before finding one that actually work. Ill give clonezilla a buzz and see how we get on.
edutech4schools Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 Not wanted to tell you how to suck eggs but do not forget to run sysprep if you are sharing an image.
smithson83 Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 I've been using Macrium Reflect to image windows 8.x, has been quite successful. After installing it on A.N.machine you can create a boot CD/USB etc and use as normal, just sysprep the reference machine and have at it.
TheRobins Posted June 16, 2014 Author Posted June 16, 2014 could have them replicate the image and the sysprep'd ready for deployment I wont
chazzy2501 Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 For PXE boot to work on a tablet it'd also have to support UEFI PXE boot, which means you need a 2012 WDS server. right?
jamesfed Posted June 16, 2014 Posted June 16, 2014 The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (free) and SCCM (not free but well worth the money!) can make an 'offline install media' - its just like imaging any normal computer except it does it from a USB stick, you can build task sequences to do funky things like setting up BitLocker and installing Adobe Reader/Office (instead of building them into the image) as well. We bought some 16GB USB sticks a while back and do all our Toshiba tablets with them - takes about an hour from end to end.
TheRobins Posted June 19, 2014 Author Posted June 19, 2014 I have looked at MDT, trouble I am having is actually getting the thing to boot to another CD or USB device. It boots fine to a Windows DVD but nothing else. They are going out the window soon, horrible rubbish.
BHMS Posted June 19, 2014 Posted June 19, 2014 I ran into this problem. The boot device must contain files like bootmgr.efi and the efi folder that you will see are on the Windows DVD. I noticed some of Microsoft's tools do not add these to boot media correctly but you can simply copy them from the DVD and it should work ok.
TheRobins Posted June 19, 2014 Author Posted June 19, 2014 Just trying CloneZilla to start with, no luck at all getting it to boot, Going to try a few more items before throwing in the towel.
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