[1803, au] My Windows 10 Deployment - Please Help!

[gsk]

Hi All,

 

We go round to a few schools and have been trying to come up with a fairly universal and hassle free way of building Windows 10 PCs, with minimal tweaking required between sites.

 

What we were doing until a couple of weeks ago:

USB Sticks with Win 10 1803 created using the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool

Add ei.cfg to force education edition

Add pid.txt from specific sites to activate on installation

Install from USB

Rename and add to domain

Push all software with PDQ Deploy on local site servers

 

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to set about making it more automated so set about creating autounattend.xml and unattend.xml answerfiles and using the iso from VLSC rather than the encrypted esd from Win 10 Media Creation Tool.

After quite a bit of faffing and following guides I've got something together but have the following downsides versus the above:

 

*Still asks for language (only US available - on the above it defaults straight to UK for everything) and locale. I thought I'd configured the answerfile correctly but clearly not! I've posted it below.

 

*Onedrive won't load properly. Windows sees it as being installed and a OneDrive folder is there but can't get the client to load in order to log in.

 

*Cortana sounds american despite selecting UK locale.

 

*Searching on start menu sometimes doesn't work

 

Any pointers of posting of your own answerfiles to compare would be appreciated!!

 

Thanks!

 

   
       
           
               en-GB
           
           0809:00000809
           EN-GB
           EN-GB
           EN-US
           EN-GB
       
       
           
               
                   
                       
                           3
                           16
                           MSR
                       
                       
                           1
                           450
                           Primary
                       
                       
                           2
                           100
                           EFI
                       
                       
                           true
                           4
                           Primary
                       
                   
                   
                       
                           NTFS
                           WinRE
                           1
                           1
                           DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC
                       
                       
                           FAT32
                           System
                           2
                           2
                       
                       
                           3
                           3
                       
                       
                           NTFS
                           Windows
                           4
                           4
                       
                   
                   0
                   true
               
           
           
               
                   
                       0
                       4
                   
               
           
           
               
                   *****-*****-*****-*****-*****
               
               true
               User
               Organistation
           
       
   
   

[tmoon-mint]

Check the ISO you have downloaded from VLSC for the language. English is EN-US and English International is EN-GB.

[gsk]

Thanks, that's embarrassingly obvious - when you know about it! Never thought to expand the language in the downloads bit on VLSC!

[LytchettNM]

If you have servers on each site then I would setup WDT/MDT this will allow you to deploy windows without USB sticks via network, and if you add an SQL database to the MDT side you can set the names of the computers automagically.

Then moving forward all you need to do is add the new ISO image for the version of Windows you want to install then next time, or create a custom wim and then deploy that which could already have any software that’s required for that school.

[mavhc]

If you have servers on each site then I would setup WDT/MDT this will allow you to deploy windows without USB sticks via network, and if you add an SQL database to the MDT side you can set the names of the computers automagically.

Then moving forward all you need to do is add the new ISO image for the version of Windows you want to install then next time, or create a custom wim and then deploy that which could already have any software that’s required for that school.

 

You can set them as you deploy just with WDS, which is what I normally do.

 

You can also add the mac addresses to WDS via a script if you're doing loads, did that when we did 150 laptops, scan mac address etc from box into spreadsheet, unpack and put asset tag on, once we'd done them all use spreadsheet to generate bat file, that meant they all got the right names and we had all the data for the inventory at the same time. (And we'd also tested the barcodes on the box were correct)

[gsk]

I've not used WDS before. Would that be suitable for a portable deployment or does it need setting up at each site?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

You can set them as you deploy just with WDS, which is what I normally do.

 

I've not used WDS before. Would that be suitable for a portable deployment or does it need setting up at each site?

[LytchettNM]

You could deploy from a laptop with enough resources for small numbers of computers but it would not perform as well as a server.

You can recognise computers via MAC etc and then both WDS or WDS/MDT can deploy the operating system, but MDT is a lot more flexible than WDS on its own.

I’ve used many deployment Methods but find IMPO using WDS/MDT and then spending a little time to understand what it can do, will in the long run save a lot of time.

I now deploy over 800 machines (in around 2 days) every year and now that MDT is set up I believe it was worth the time spent.

[mavhc]

I've not used WDS before. Would that be suitable for a portable deployment or does it need setting up at each site?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

I've not used WDS before. Would that be suitable for a portable deployment or does it need setting up at each site?

 

Could run it on a laptop I guess, don't need AD, just DHCP really.

 

Install Windows server on a laptop/vm, add WDS role, get a windows 10 wim, add it to the server, add a boot.wim from the win 10 iso, then create an unattended.xml file, apply it to the image in wds. That should be the minimum you need, can go from there