WDS Query

[Bankesy]

Good morning

 

Having recently started at a new site I have been tasked with using an existing WDS setup to deploy an existing image to new hardware.

 

Nobody was able to tell me much about how successful this may have been in the past and I'm wondering if it has ever worked in light of this problem:

 

If I PXE boot the new PCs or any for that matter WDS loads the .wim file without any errors and the Windows installation completes without any errors until we get to the 'Starting Windows' page and then it just crashes and loops round into the startup options page (the one with the 'Start Windows normally, Safe Mode, Last known good configuration' options). I've tried all of these with no success.

 

All I can add is that this is Win 7 32bit and the .wim in question has other images associated with it which do work.

 

I've tried adding relevant driver packages to WDS and the boot image so any other advice would be welcome.

 

Thank you

[eddyc]

Hello,

 

Have you set up appropriate filters on the drivers to ensure that they are being installed on that hardware?

 

I've seen boot cycling when various different versions of the Intel USB3 drivers are injected side by side

 

eddyc

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

I was trying to copy what looked like the template that had been left before me so I added a new driver group called HP Elite 8300 and then added the graphics, storage\hard drive, and NIC drivers to it.

 

I then added these drivers to the boot image.

 

None of the existing driver groups had filters applied but I have now added one for make (HP) and model (Elite 8300) to the HP Elite 8300 group.

 

Interestingly there does appear to be another driver group called Elite 8300 with just one driver in it but I'm not sure what this would have been used for historically as we don't have any of those until now.

[DavetheITguy]

It sounds like a driver issue. How was the original image made? Was it on a VM?

[LeMarchand]

I had something similar and IIRC it was a bad line in my unattend.xml.

[Bankesy]

Hello

 

I'm not sure how the original image was made because the original staff who had the knowledge on it were gone before I even started.

 

I have found the location of the unattended XMLs for the images but wouldn't be sure of what I'm looking for.

 

Thank you

[LeMarchand]

Re: Unattend, there is a tool that you can feed yours into and it will check. IIRC it's called Windows System Image Manager and I think it's part of https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=5753 .

 

Or make a copy, remove any keys/identifying details and stick it up here - someone may be able to spot an error.

 

Re how it was made, do you have VMWare or HyperV (or even VirtualBox) installed somewhere? You may find a likely VM in the list of machines.

[Bankesy]

I am now uncertain which is worse, the imaging not working or the fact that I'm so out of touch I had to look up what IIRC means.

 

Anyway yes we have HyperV and I can see a machine called Imaging Test which looks likely as you put it.

 

I'm just downloading and installing the Windows System Imaging Manager.

[Bankesy]

Apologies for the continued questions but I'm not really getting anywhere with this:

 

Am I missing a significance\relationship to their being a virtual machine with the image on and the image in WDS?

 

The Image Manager didn't make a lot of sense to me, I got it installed on the server and pointed it at the .wim only for it to error out as the application was 64 bit and the image 32 bit, when trying to install the 32 bit Image Manager it complained because the server is 64 bit.

 

So I installed the image manager on my PC and took a copy of the .wim and unattended files but when using them get an error about it being unable to find a catalogue file (I have run a search on the server for this but can only find one related to Windows 8.1). Image Manager then asks if I would like to create a catalogue file to which I said yes but having done this it reported a lot of errors which I'm guessing are misleading as it's not looking at the correct catalogue file to begin with.

[LeMarchand]

Will try to take a look later if no-one gets back to you. Not sure where @DavetheITguy was going with the VM question - possibly worried that if the image was captured from a physical machine it would have its drivers? If I still have a working W7 x32 unattend available I'll try to post it.

[Achandler]

When you sysprep the drivers should be removed anyway, so the image should be clean.

 

Personally I would disable all the drivers and disable the unattend.

Then reimage, two things are likely to happen, either you sucessfully get an imaged computer (without drivers) or you get stuck in the same loop. If you get stuck on the loop then I think the original image is liekly the cause of the problem.

[Bankesy]

Thanks to the last two posts.

 

I'm going to try these approaches later and let you know, thanks for your time.

[Bankesy]

Update: disabled all the driver groups in WDS to no avail

[LeMarchand]

Update: disabled all the driver groups in WDS to no avail

 

Which server OS are you using?

[Bankesy]

Thank you for your response but it's ok now.

 

We had our 3rd party support look at it and they suggested re-capturing the image which appeared to work.