[wds] WDS - What tools do you use?

[Tridor]

Hello folks,

 

I have WDS up and running on server 2008 at my school. At the moment we are capturing and deploying XP images only. The process is automated using the unattented.xml & sysprep.inf files.

 

The only tools I currently use to do this are:

Sysprep to prep my XP image before capturing

WDS for the capture/deployment.

Notepad++ to edit the unattended files I have created.

 

The whole process seems a bit long winded and certainly involves more prep work than when we used RIS, but our network manager wanted to move to WDS so no going back now!

 

Are there better tools to help me manage this process?

 

I am aware of MDT, Windows SIM & ImageX but I don't know if they would be any use.

 

What setup do you use? Any thoughts appreciated.

 

Thanks

Pete

[mac_shinobi]

not tried or used WDS as of yet but heard it takes a bit of configuring as I am sure any imaging process would anyway - but heard a lot of good things about FOG and seen a lot of people post questions on here on how to get FOG to automate it more ie making the computer join the domain etc

 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeghost/

[garethEds]

Hello folks,

 

I have WDS up and running on server 2008 at my school. At the moment we are capturing and deploying XP images only. The process is automated using the unattented.xml & sysprep.inf files.

 

The only tools I currently use to do this are:

Sysprep to prep my XP image before capturing

WDS for the capture/deployment.

Notepad++ to edit the unattended files I have created.

 

The whole process seems a bit long winded and certainly involves more prep work than when we used RIS, but our network manager wanted to move to WDS so no going back now!

 

Are there better tools to help me manage this process?

 

I am aware of MDT, Windows SIM & ImageX but I don't know if they would be any use.

 

What setup do you use? Any thoughts appreciated.

 

Thanks

Pete

 

I've found plenty of tools and websites. The best one at the moment I use for editing my image and adding drivers is:

 

ImageX GUI (GImageX)

 

I found a website today that tells me how to change the registry of an image. I did this today and it worked.

 

Not used much else,

 

GJE

[plexer]

Mdt allows you to boot install os from a source install drivers as needed then capture it for deployment.

[Danielle]

Edited January 25, 2010 by Dos_Box