Capturing Windows 11 with MDT - how I did it

[Rockpile99]

We're a long way from deploying Win 11 where I work but I had some time whilst recovering from Covid ... Lots of problems with capturing Win 11 and various instructions/fixes on the internet but not in one place.

 

Here's what worked for me in case anyone finds it useful;

 

Updated MDT server with latest ADK and the ‘boot loop’ hotfix.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/windows-10-deployments-fail-with-microsoft-deployment-toolkit-on-computers-with-bios-type-firmware-70557b0b-6be3-81d2-556f-b313e29e2cb7

 

Updated deployment share and fully regenerated boot images

Added Windows 11 Enterprise Operating system to MDT

(Note MDT operating system description still shows as Windows 10 but you can rename)

 

Created ‘Capture’ Task Sequence using the Windows 11 operating system.

Edited the Capture TS to include the following two ‘run command line’ steps between ‘Add Mass storage drivers’ and ‘Execute Sysprep’;

 

cmd /c reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Appx" /v "AllowDeploymentInSpecialProfiles" /t "REG_DWORD" /d "1" /f

 

cmd.exe /c powershell.exe -executionpolicy bypass -file "%SCRIPTROOT%\fixsysprep.ps1"

 

Where ‘fixsysprep.ps1’ is the script provided by Microsoft to get around OneDrive breaking Sysprep.

 

See the comment by JonathanConway77 on 2/3/2022 in https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/596112/windows-111-mdt-sysprep-failure-onedrive.html?page=2&pageSize=10&sort=oldest for an explanation.

 

Get your reference machine ready (in my case it was a VM on Hyper-V) and don’t forget to run Windows Update until no updates are found.

 

I launch the capture TS by opening \\MDT-Server\deploymentshare$\scripts and running the BDD_Autorun.wsf script and choosing the relevant capture TS via the wizard.

 

After the ‘Execute Sysprep’ step of the TS, my VM rebooted, opened the ‘choose TS wizard’, and failed to proceed to the ‘Create WIM’ step.

 

To fix this I did the following;

 

Cancelled the TS until I was back in command prompt (with drive letter X) and did the following in diskpart

 

list disk

select disk 0

select part 3

assign letter=c

exit

 

Then ran “startnet.cmd” from the command line (as per

)

 

After that the capture worked (with just two warnings about creating WebService class)

 

I imported captured WIM to MDT and then deployed with standard TS

[mobrien]

We moved away from MDT capturing for when we moved to Windows 10. Too lengthy a process and really cumbersome every time we wanted to make an update to the master image.

 

Instead we added all our apps to the Applications in MDT.

Our task sequence installs Win 11 OS added straight from the iso (no capture necessary, just add straight to MDT) and then goes on to install the apps as task sequence items.

We have a couple of scripts to clean things up at the end of the install and then good to go.

Any app updates or OS updates, we just update the relevant application or OS and it all works.

 

When Win 11 came out, we just imported the extracted ISO as an OS in MDT and it all worked without any changes to the task sequence. Apps installed, cleanup scripts worked, no bother.

[slugshead]

That's the old (windows 7) way of doing it.

 

Just add the bare ISO to your TS and go from there

[Rockpile99]

Thanks for the tips mobrien and slugshead

 

Like I said, we're a long from deploying Win11 throughout the school - this was all done as research and the information shared for anyone who might find it useful. I had no problem deploying W11 through a standard TS (either captured image or from W11 ISO) - just needed to add a cleanup script for the bloatware.

 

I know everyone has their own preferences but updating a W10 image once a year isn't that big a problem for me. I keep a Hyper-V checkpoint of the reference VM so it's a just a case of doing any Windows updates and any app changes then capturing (usually around an hour's work). Most of our apps are deployed during the TS or targetted via Group Policy but we have some apps that can't be done this way. It also cuts down the number of Windows updates a re-imaged computer has to do.

 

Cheers

[slugshead]

Just something to consider, like you said everyone does things differently.

 

But I don't remove the "bloatware", the appx packages. I've found that in some scenarios, they are interlinked and requires their presence. So what I did was just deny access to them using AppLocker, it's worked a treat. Shorter TS and just works