WDS/MDT task sequence

[dhorowitz]

My task sequences are not showing up on my client PC. I've set everything up using lot of default settings, and checked my permissions, everything seems like it's right. LiteTouch asks me for username/password, and that is entered fine, and the task sequence window pops up and is empty...grr.r..

[scottpowers82]

Have you tried updating your boot images? Sometimes when I have had any kind of an odd issue, I have tried to update the boot image and it has fixed a problem for me a couple times. Also, I had a problem recently with driver injection (I was mixing XP and Win7 drivers in WinPE) and even though I had updated the boot image to the way I knew it should work, it just wouldn't. I then had MDT do a full rebuild of my boot image and it seemed to fix the issue. It's worth at least giving it a try...

[dhorowitz]

Ok, I seem to have fixed the issue of the missing task sequences. Now I'm trying to make this deployment work for both x86 and x64 architectures. My MDT share is on a VM server running 2008 x64, and I have PCs that need to use the X86 version of W7. When I go to import the OS, it forces to x64. Do I need to run on server os x86 for my deployment to work properly or should I just run 2 shares?

[scottpowers82]

You don't need two shares to run both architectures. When you are using the 64bit version of the Windows System Image Manager (The thing you use to edit the sysprep files), it can only create a 64bit catalog of windows. It can import both 32bit and 64bit versions, but the catalog itself must be made on its respective architecture. I actually have a VM (32bit, Windows 7) that I use just for creating the 32bit catalogs and then import them into my 64bit 2008 R2 server. Try making your catalog file on a 32bit machine and then see if you can import them into your server. Should do the trick for you...

[dhorowitz]

I haven't gotten to the point where I'm testing customizing the sysprep files. I'm just trying to import the 32 bit version of Win7 into MDT so I can start to customize my image.

[scottpowers82]

Yes, but when you import your image of Windows 7 into MDT, it will automatically generate the catalog for you (which you can manually do in the WSIM tool) and only a computer running a 32bit version of the WSIM tool can create the catalog for your 32bit image. Question though: Are you importing an image that you just created? Or are you just trying to import the Windows 7 DVD into MDT? Also, if you are importing a captured image, are you choosing to import with or without the setup files?

[dhorowitz]

I'm going off of a copy of the extracted .ISO on the network. Can you tell me how to generate the 32 bit catalog using WSIM?

[dhorowitz]

I've created my x86 catalog on an x86 architecture PC and updated my deployment shares with regeneration completely after creating a task sequence for x86 installation. Unfortunately when I get to the task sequence screen, it's blank. I've rebooted my server, re-updated the points. Still blank.