Currently using the windows 7 boot.wim. Is there a better way?

[Sam_Brown]

But it's about 150 meg and takes about 4 minutes to download to the computers to be imaged.

 

Surely there must be a faster way to boot using WDS?

 

I've heard you can change the TFPT block size to speed this up but still... 150 meg is quite a lot. Especially if you're trying to do 30 computers at once!

[Sam_Brown]

Anyone?

[jamesfed]

What is your LAN speed from the server to the switches to the machines? Over a 1Gbs connection we can usaly get into WDS in 1-2mins (using Win7 boot) but over a 100Mbs connection you would expect 4mins+.

[tarquel]

I've not timed ours but 3/4 mins sounds about right for winPE to boot on a 100Mb infra.

 

You could potentially make up a USB flash pen with it on to boot it i guess if its a big concern.

 

Nath.

[cromertech]

Mine is about 2 min mark on 100Mb. Using the Litetouch.wim image created from the MDT workbench instead.

[sacrej]

If you're rebuilding existing machines, you could always run litetouch.vbs from scripts under deploymentshare$ (using MDT) we push it to all machines we want to image using abtutor, go round fill in the details and leave it to run, no more user interaction required, this is with a precaptured windows 7build.

I want to try and get ZTI/UDI working using SCCM2007 but its pretty heavy work when there is only 2 of us and a whole school to support. :/

seriously though, using the vbs meant we could set them off at the end of the day and then just go home, before we would have to wait for them to finish and fill in the existing details, or go round and f12 at boot for pxe, this process bypasses PXE completely which is awesome, and I believe you can use it to capture/sysprep machines too.

it adds the winPE boot image to the system bootloader so when the system restarts it comes up automatically.