mdt with non-networkable machines

[jjohnsoncantell]

Greetings,

 

I have a number of clients with damaged nic sockets so cannot image them via MDT (not even going to try wireless). With ghost i could image the drive in a different client, shut down before the reboot and swap the drive back into the problem client. Can I do this with MDT? I thought MDT loads drivers for the PE environment before the imaging process, meaning it would load the drivers for the client the drive is in at the time. Will I still be able to swap the drive back before the first reboot as I could with ghost?

 

All help gratefully received

[localzuk]

I'd recommend creating MDT Offline Deployment Media - Creating an Offline MDT Deployment Media » Adrian Costea's blog

[andydis]

Can I do this with MDT?

 

yes I believe as long as the hardware is the same. We have to do this all the time with same model numbers that nics have failed on.

[free780]

Though if the nic is damaged the PC is a bit useless.

[MatthewL]

What about one of those USB NIC's?

[cpjitservices]

How have the NICS been damaged ? Are these PC's ?

 

if so can you get a PCI(E) NIC ?

[jjohnsoncantell]

Thanks for your replies guys.. They're all laptops which makes it a little awkward. I was considering whipping out the drive during the restart which occurs just after the image has been applied, but at this stage the drivers have already been copied to the system. However, if they are identical as you say @andydis then I agree it should be ok. I will give it a trial to see what happens. That's the other option @MatthewL if all else fails. I don't think I could make media for it as the image is almost 30gb.

[SHimmer45]

the offline media iirc can be set to include drivers for multiple machine types

[LeMarchand]

I've pulled good drives from dead laptops and just put them into different machines and not had problems. The drives were created with WDS but didn't use MDT. Most drivers get automatically picked up (assuming the wireless card is recognised!) but a few may need to be found. Windows and Office(?) will need to re-authenticate, so if you used MAKs this will have to be done manually.

 

I'd give it a try!

 

Otherwise, how many laptops? If only a handful you could create something like a Clonezilla image and use a USB drive to apply direct.

[jjohnsoncantell]

My colleague has also just pointed out that MDT still needs to talk to the network during the windows setup phase which, as you can imagine, would be difficult on a client with a busted nic. I cant see how it would be possible to activate the wireless before that, or am i wrong?

[jjohnsoncantell]

@LeMarchand I was thinking along those lines but I don't want to have any problems with wsus ids and duplicated sids etc.

[LeMarchand]

@LeMarchand I was thinking along those lines but I don't want to have any problems with wsus ids and duplicated sids etc.

 

Do you mean disk-swapping or Clonezilla?

[karlr]

I think your best bet is to invest in a USB Ethernet adapter. We have a StarTech USB 2.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter for scenarios like this (it was bought specifically to handle imaging a Dell XPS 13 that simply does not have Ethernet). Note that the USB Ethernet is not perfect however - we were unable to get it to properly PXE into MDT, so we still need to use a USB Stick to boot into MDT (this just contains the LiteTouch ISO, so a 512mb memory stick is sufficient).

[jjohnsoncantell]

@LeMarchand using the disk swap method. @karlr im starting to think thats the best way to do this.

[jjohnsoncantell]

I tried disk swapping on the first reboot after imaging but it failed the task sequence..

 

Is there a way of imaging the drive via a task squence then having a fresh task sequence to take it through the setup portion of the install?

[Oaktech]

I don't have MDT and have never used it, but I have windows PE on a bootable USB with the WDS information on it, with the driver for a startech USB adapter inserted into it. Could you do something similar?

 

I use it for building our tablets because they don't PXE.