Stephen_UK Posted January 12 Posted January 12 We are an Autopilot school, which was implemented by predecessors to me, with little info available and little thought into the overall process, particularly for rebuilds. It seems that in theory, a factory reset should be do-able to rebuild a device if it is bootable, however we have a handful of machines that are not bootable/recoverable. Our support partner helpfully(!) when I asked about this, told me we should have our own image to put on devices and in the past this is what we have provided. There is an SCCM deployment (again, I found it on a version from about 4 years ago as allegedly it isn't used, but has been used to build some of the desktops we have in school which they couldn't get working on Autopilot at the time, but hasn't actually been decommissioned) but for what we need, it feels like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Ideally, I would like a simple solution that I can PXE boot, but could USB if needed, where I can install Windows 11, plus a driver pack and then let Autopilot take over from there. I believe MDT/WDS is deprecated, as I say SCCM (MECM) feels like overkill, and I would rather not need an image file as it will need updating for Windows versions/device types and would need Sysprep consideration. Any advice would be much appreciated
FN-GM Posted January 12 Posted January 12 (edited) I am using OSDCloud it will do the following Download latest ISO from Microsoft Install to the disk Download drivers from Dell, HP or Lenovo (probably more!) Install the drivers. Reboot handoff to Autopilot. Works great and is Zero Touch. We use USB boot, no need for On-prem servers. Edited January 12 by FN-GM 1
Stephen_UK Posted January 12 Author Posted January 12 5 minutes ago, FN-GM said: I am using OSDCloud it will do the following Download latest ISO from Microsoft Install to the disk Download drivers from Dell, HP or Lenovo (probably more!) Install the drivers. Reboot handoff to Autopilot. Works great and is Zero Touch. We use USB boot, no need for On-prem servers. Thanks for this quick reply - this sounds like it is exactly what I am trying to achieve. I will take a look at this and see how I get on
RobFuller Posted January 12 Posted January 12 This is the way! I also spun up a server with windows deployment services and just popped the WIM file from the ISO image as the boot image, saves using USB drives for mass rebuilds. There are also ways of hosting this in the cloud and using HTTPs boot (device support required) but not dug into this yet. 1
Stephen_UK Posted January 19 Author Posted January 19 Just to respond, having initially being quite daunted by CloudOSD, I revisited it again just before the weekend with a clear head and managed to create a new workspace, adding drivers for our devices (Stone OEM, so nothing available automatically) and successfully built one laptop. I will look at the WDS option too for PXE booting. Hopefully I can look to them eradicate the tangled web of SCCM from the environment that looks to be doing very little now!
FN-GM Posted January 20 Posted January 20 Great news! I have just rebuilt our OSDcloud to switch over to 25H2. I am find the region selection isn't working and stopping the deployment process for some reason. I created an unattended file and I am deploying this into the image using OSDcloud to force it so Australia and seems to fix it. Just letting you know in case you have the same issue.
Stephen_UK Posted January 20 Author Posted January 20 21 minutes ago, FN-GM said: Great news! I have just rebuilt our OSDcloud to switch over to 25H2. I am find the region selection isn't working and stopping the deployment process for some reason. I created an unattended file and I am deploying this into the image using OSDcloud to force it so Australia and seems to fix it. Just letting you know in case you have the same issue. I am using 25H2 off the bat, with English International to deploy English UK (so many of our machines have been SCCM's with US locale, which is causing issues in of itself!) One question I have - it seems that despite injecting a whole heap of drivers into the build, it is going off to Microsoft to download at least some of them, which seems somewhat unecessary. Any way to stop that? Next thing I need to do is a Connected Cache server so less goes out to the internet generally
itskdog Posted January 20 Posted January 20 I use this tool to create a clean USB image with the drivers included. https://github.com/rbalsleyMSFT/FFU Have looked into OSDCloud, haven't had a chance to use it as it doesn't like machines with 4GB RAM, which are the main ones I'm rebuilding lately (DfE laptops from Covid)
FN-GM Posted January 21 Posted January 21 19 hours ago, itskdog said: it doesn't like machines with 4GB RAM, which are the main ones I'm rebuilding lately (DfE laptops from Covid) How do you mean?
itskdog Posted January 21 Posted January 21 (edited) 2 minutes ago, FN-GM said: How do you mean? When I made an OSDCloud USB stick and put it into one of those machines, it gave me some sort of error relating to the low amount of RAM. It's been a few months and I've wiped the stick since then, so I can't remember off of the top of my head now. Edited January 21 by itskdog a word
FN-GM Posted January 21 Posted January 21 1 minute ago, itskdog said: When I made an OSDCloud USB stick and put it into one of those machines, it gave me some sort of error relating to the low amount of RAM. It's been a few months and I've wiped the stick since then, so I can't remember off of the top of my head now. Our minimum RAM is 16GB so not come across it. I'm a bit surprised it had an issue. I assume that is related to Windows PE though.
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