Imaging Without Network Port

[Brad_Sarge]

Hi All,

 

I use fog to deploy the images to machines around school, it works well but all of the laptops/pc's have to be plugged into a network port.

We recently got new laptops and I have been told to "Sort them out". I need to image them so does anyone know how to use fog without a network port.

 

Thanks all

-Brad

[chris_uk]

USB Network adapter?

[LeMarchand]

Do you use sysprep still? You could use a spare networked machine to create a Clonezilla image and that will boot via optical or USB and accept an external hard drive as the source of the image.

[Oaktech]

Startech USB 3 PXE network adapter.

 

Or a non pxe network adapter and a USB stick.

 

This was done for the Linx pro tablets and the Acer w510, but I've followed an almost identical procedure for w10.

 

Things you need:

a working WDS server

the AIK for your version of windows

1x usb stick for initial build media

1x usb hub

1x usb keyboard

1x usb mouse

1x USB NIC card with drivers (I've got a startech one)

2x 4gb or bigger usb sticks

 

What I did was to place the windows media on a usb drive, use the usb host cable to connect a usb hub, connect the boot usb and a keyboard and mouse to the hub and boot the tablet off the stick. Install whatever flavour of windows you want - we used 8.1 enterprise and all of your software. Sysprep the machine as you would normally

 

Use the WDS server to create a capture image using the process in this article: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11680.creating-a-capture-image-in-wds.aspx when the image is created, mount it in the WDS console and inject the drivers for your usb nic, dismount it and copy it to one of the 2gb or bigger USB sticks. This is your capture stick. It is architecture dependent.

 

Use the capture stick to run through the process of sysprepping the machine onto your WDS server

 

Follow the instructions here to use the AIK to create a discover image https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd637996(v=ws.10).aspx mount the discover image in WDS and inject the USB drivers again.

 

Use this to boot and build the machine from your WDS server using the image you created before.

 

Simples!

 

Hopefully this will help you. It's PITA, but it is doable.

Edited October 21, 2016 by Oaktech

[Guest obsidianpillar]

You could move to MDT and create a media drive and then boot from the USB stick.

[fredbayker]

Providing they're all the same model with the same spec, I'd build one, sysprep it (not generalised) and clone it to an external USB HD using Clonezilla. Once you have a disk image, clone each machine using the USB drive as the source.

Each one will probably take 15-20 mins

[GreyFox]

Hi Brad,

 

You having fun there mate?

Have these new laptops not got network ports then? I don't see why you can't keep using FOG otherwise... I think Zhinkler's idea will probably work best for you though. Deploy one of the latest updated images to a PC, don't let it boot. Capture it using Clonezilla to a USB HDD, then deploy from the USB HDD to one of the new laptops. You'll have to update it with drivers etc, then sysprep and capture again to deploy to another one. Alternatively, just install the OS etc from scratch, but an existing image would be quicker.

 

Grey Fox

 

Grey Fox