[wds] Tips for beginners

[Uraken]

can you do this for the wds boot images as well?

[maniac]

I use it primerily for putting the drivers into the boot image. I've not used it to add drivers to the actual workstation image, as these are all pre-installed into windows before I take the image.

 

Mike.

[rush_tech]

@maniac It did occur after reading your post on how to add a driver to a .wim image :oops: I'll give that a bash

 

Cheers

[rush_tech]

update......Ive managed to get the network driver into the image ok but it was a xp network driver (this did'nt work) I'm using images that come with AIK. So its a vista boot image. I'm trying to image a Hp D530 on looking to download the vista driver from HP site It shows in the listing but there is no file so I guess I'll have to wait for the driver to be put back. stopped in my tracks

 

unless someone knows of a place i can download it other that hp site.

 

Oh I have also tried the driver from broadcoms site no luck.

 

***update**** I'm downloading the previous version to try that

[maniac]

I've found XP drivers sometimes work with windows PE, and sometimes don't. The driver MUST be signed in order for it to work thou.

 

Some of our machines have broadcom drivers, and I don't to recall having any problems getting a working driver. Infact our HP 6310 laptops have a broadcom network card, and these worked without a hitch. B44win was the .inf file name, is this the one you've tried??

 

Mike.

[rush_tech]

No its the one attached b57nd60x "see attached file"

Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit i'm not sure if its signed or not :?

b57nd60x.zip

[pete]

Windows could not display the images available for installation

 

This is sometimes caused by using an oem boot.wim (from a Dell Vista CD in my case) rather than a Select or Genuine MS one. But fear not, we can fix this.

 

Assuming you’re on a machine where the Windows Automated Install Kit is installed, grab a _fresh_ copy of boot.wim from OEMCD\Sources\boot.wim and copy it to the machine.

 

Open a command prompt (the AIK stuff is in the system path on my machine) and mount the boot.wim

mkdir E:\path\to\temporary\folder
imagex /mountrw e:\path\to\boot.wim 2 e:\path\to\temporary\folder

go into e:\path\to\temporary\folder\Sources and delete pid.txt

 

exit the path (cd \ ) and then unmount the image

imagex /unmount /commit e:\path\to\temp\folder

Then add the boot image to WDS in the usual way (and call it something descriptive).

[Arcolite]

I've been using one image on my WDS server for a while now, but the time has come where I need to add a second image to the server.

 

My current image is fully unattended and uses a autounattend.xml to do all the tricks. The trouble I have is that the unattended file is on the main server config. If I try to attach it to the image itself I get a "This image version doesn't support adding an unattended setup file using this method" error.

 

This means that to use the other image, I have to tell the server which .xml to look at BEFORE I start to build those machines.

 

I'd like to be able to have multiple images, all with Unattended files which can be selected from the workstation via te PE Image Selection (which I have yet to see!) not the server.

 

Any ideas what I need to change?

[ICTNUT]

Hello All,

 

Just started playing with WDS and am testing image rollout however I have a problem the laptops I want to image have 4 partitions on them and I want to have wds wipe these and create a single drive spanning the whole size of the disk.

 

I am using an WDSClientunattend.xml file to perform certain unattended functions and have set it to wipe the drive but it just does not do it.

 

Anyone done this successfully or got any ideas??

 

My .xml file:

 

Never

1

Primary

true

0

true

true

False

NTFS

SYSTEM

C

1

1

JKHS-PD

***********

installer

en-UK

0809:00000809

en-UK

en-UK

en-UK

[maniac]

Getting this part of my WDS system working was a pain. Problem is if you get any of the commands in the wrong order, then it seems to ignore the entire section, but it doesn't actually tell you it's doing that.

 

This is my unatend.xml file which does exactly what you are aiming for. We use it on our system. See if it works for you.

 

- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
 OnError 
- 
 administrator 
 DOMAINHERE 
 PASSWORDHERE 
 
 
- 
 OnError 
- 
 0 
 1 
 
 
 
- 
 OnError 
- 
 0 
- 
- 
 true 
 1 
 Primary 
 
 
 True 
- 
- 
 1 
 1 
 C 
 NBC 
 NTFS 
 true 
 false 
 
 
 
 
 
- 
- 
 OnError 
 en-US 
 
 en-US 
 
 
 

 

I think the ordering is a bit different on mine compared to your's, this may be the problem. Took me days to get it working properly.

 

You'll need to add your domain admin password and domain name, and you'll probably want to change the default drive label from NBC to your choise.

 

Mike

[djones]

Step-by-step guide to using WDS/SYSPREP to deploy hardware independent Windows XP images

 

Probably should have posted in this thread instead of here - sorry about the duplicate post!

 

There are some parts still to do but the main sections are there.

 

If you do have a look or even use any bits, please leave some feedback - especially if there mistakes or parts that don't make sense.

 

Dave.

Edited May 25, 2008 by djones

[Dos_Box]

I've found an unattended.xml creator

 

http://dc412.org/unattend.php

[humpda]

Hi

We are using WDS to deploy WINXPSP2 images to a variety of machines. I have built an image for an Acer Veriton S460. It uploads with no problems, however when I try and deploy the image I get the error "The system is not fully installed. Run setup again"...it then restarts the machine and continues the loop. Any ideas what I have done wrong...?

 

Many thanks for the advice.

 

Cheers

[djones]

Do you have Windows Media Player v11 installed on the base machine you are creating the image from?

[humpda]

Thanks for response....

 

I think we deploy wm11 across the network...have to check (It is 7.20pm on Sunday in Australia and watching India and Aust play a ODI so not overtly excited by the thought of work ). Is there an incompatibility with WM11? 11 then?

 

Cheers

[djones]

Not completely sure, just remember reading something about an incompatibility between sysprep and WMP11 - registry setting becoming corrupt.

 

I'll have a look through my saved links.

[djones]

There is a very convoluted workaround detailed in this article:

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320279

 

...but it does appear to be WMP11 that can cause this. Oddly though, I have WMP11 installed on my generic image and this doesn't cause any probems. Are you using the latest version of sysprep too?

 

Dave.

[humpda]

cheers mate....I did a quick search for sysprep and wm11....indeed it looks like an issue, but they are talking about the install being interrupted by a pop-up concerning MSOOBE.exe....

 

Oh well...will give it a go tomorrow from scratch minus wm11 and see what happens....bummer that it takes so long to "build" the master image....

 

Cheers

[humpda]

I think I am using the latest version. Will download the "latest" from MS and try again...Thanks

[djones]

Do you use the -reseal -mini switches when running sysprep? This should prevent the issue...according to several articles I've just found on the subject. They are the options I use when sysprep'ing which may explain why I've not seen the problem with deploying my image - but then again it could just be a red herring.

 

Enjoy the cricket!

[M0TTX]

This looks to be a great place...looking forward to coming back here often...

 

This is the problem I have...Just set up WDS seems to work fine on all but one make of laptop...PE boots fine but whe I try to Map say the M: drive to the distribution share is says systems error 53 has occurred the network path was not found. As I said this works fine on other laptops.....Could this be a driver issue?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Gatt]

Ok just tried to deploy Vista SP1.

 

All went ok -Ran Sysprep - used the XML Gerenator that Dos_Box posted, and it went and did its bit to 15 PCs

 

came in this morning and logged on to a few of them and found this..

 

It was constantly opening the "Documents" Folder for the user (including Local Users)

 

If left it just opened them up and up and up and up.....

 

Had to start shoving XP back on them luckily we have an assembly so P1 isnt affected but P2 will be

 

Anyone seent his before with Vista after Sysprep/WDS deployment?

 

UPDATE

OK found the problem - the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\userinit value was set to something other than C:\Windows\System32\userinit.exe

Once I editted it back (difficult with around 700+ "Documents" folders and more opening every few seconds!) and rebooted it was fine..

Trying Sysrprep again...

Edited March 7, 2008 by Gatt

[Arcolite]

I've been using WDS in our school for a while now and it's working out perfectly. However, we've just got a new batch to workstations in and even though our image has driver packs, these must be old as the soundcard in these machines isn't being installed (it's installing a driver, but it's the wrong one or soemthing).

 

How can I inject new drivers into our image?

 

Obviously I can recreate it from scratch with new driver packs, but I don't really want to do that, it's my last resort.

[Mr_Glass]

To edit the image to add new drivers you can mount the image using imagex tool that comes with the AIK tools. See the following link for more details.

 

Mount and modify an image

[projector1]

Just setup WDS native mode on our 2003 admin server (seperate domain from circ)

Got the XP PRO image ready for capturing.

Just need some advice on setup.

 

Our circ DC is a dchp server for whole network. It is also a DNS server. There is a zone transfer setup with the admin DC. Would WDS work in this environment or would i need DHCP on the admin DC?

Edited June 5, 2008 by projector1