[wds] Windows XP Unattended Deployment

[Jack_F]

Good evening,

 

I come to you with a slightly largish question - I have just began work in a new company, and have been tasked with the task of deploying/rolling out a number of OS's on a number of DIFFERENT machines company wide (100+).

 

I have spent the last 3 days setting up a brand new server which will be used as a WSUS, Symantec End Point Manager and WDS server - everything has gone swimmingly with help from a number of threads by users across this site (thanks!) - but now comes to point of customisation where I am all ears.

 

My perfect idea (Not necessarily going to be achieved, but this is what I would like to get it as close to as possible with your guidance):

 

1.

Employee workstations will require Windows XP (soon to be Windows 7 once our Applications Development team ports across more software) - we currently have a Volume License Key and are obviously be required to join a Domain (Active Directory centralised). I also (if possible) do not want any additional accounts made (Just the usual Administrator) since its being added to a Domain.

 

The tricky parts are as follows; The computer name is UNIQUE to each PC (Obviously) and relates to an Asset sticker on the PC/Notebook itself - for example PC-[LOCATION]-[Asset No.], the machine will then need to be added to our Domain and the Volume License Key be added. Now the Domain and Product Key is fine, but the problems I foresee will be the 'Computer Name'.

 

I will be happy to have everything automated APART from the Computer Name which will prompt a popup for me to enter (we'll one of my I.T. Junkies ) and for the usual additional account creation to bugger off - is this at all possible?

 

2.

We also deal with Clients (Obviously being a business) in which we send out per-configured Thin Clients - at the moment we currently image each manually by plugging as USB into the desired PC and running the following .bat file:

 

RDEPLOY.EXE -noprompt -md -f BLAH.img -d2 -sz1:100p -restoresig

 

It then continues to install XP Embedded and launches a number of "On 1st Boot" applications which gather information pertaining to Computer Name etc,

 

My question is - can I go about capturing the image through WDS and still have those "On 1st Boot" applications run as per usual? I won't be missing out on anything from that .bat if I capture through WDS ethier will I?

 

As a side-note: The server is currently running W2K3 Server - we are looking at upgrading to 2008 R2 soon'ish - if you believe that this will make the above process easier/quicker please inform me and I may be able to convince my boss to do it sooner than later. Also if you believe that WDS is not the way to go about things, I am completely open to suggestions.

 

Thanks for your time - looking forward to hearing back,

Jack

Edited January 27, 2010 by Jack_F

[Jack_F]

Well after the last week, I have successfully been able to Image a bunch of Compaq 5730's HOWEVER the following issues/problems occur:

 

1. When I try to image a DIFFERENT type of PC I run into ethier:

 

Windows cannot access the installation source...

 

or

 

An error before it even boots into Boot.wim

 

I have no idea how to resolve this one...

 

2. If I leave Computer Name blank, it is not prompting the user to enter a Computer Name (This is what I want to happen), inside it is using my Servers' Domain login Username...

 

3. Nothing I do will make it join our Domain at work.

 

Ideas?

[adamchapman]

Windows cannot access the installation source...

 

Have you checked that the Reminst share on the WDS server has permissions for everyone to read?

[Jack_F]

Have you checked that the Reminst share on the WDS server has permissions for everyone to read?

 

I have indeed, but as you can see from my previous post, I have installed about 15+ HP 5720 machines perfectly fine...

[cookie_monster]

The "Windows cannot access the installation source..." error looks like a network card driver issue to me. Have you checked if the image has access to a driver that supports the network card 'exactly'? I've had so many issues over the years with 'slightly' incompatible drivers especially Realtek and Intel.

[Jack_F]

TBH, I hadn't added ANY drivers to the sysprep - I guess I was just lucky.

 

I came across News | DriverPacks.net which looks promising for WDS deployment, so going to re-capture new image and hope for the best.

 

One question I do have relates to my above post. I really would like to have Computer Name prompted for during installation as each PC has a unique Asset Tag, and would also love to have them join our Domain here at work.

 

Nothing I've entered has worked - ideas?

[cookie_monster]

It might be worth posting in the WDS sticky thread there's quite a few using WDS there and i've seen this issue discussed.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/7196-tips-beginners.html

[adamchapman]

" I really would like to have Computer Name prompted for during installation as each PC has a unique Asset Tag, and would also love to have them join our Domain here at work. "

 

I use sysprep and leave the machine name blank which should then prompt you to enter one.

 

you can also specify the domain name and a user and pass to use.

 

Have a look here for a start... use the configmgr to create the file then tweak in notepad if needed.