mhundley

Not sure if this is exactly what you want but you could run an internal website in IIS/Apache and simply include hyperlinks to the installation files, I have done this at one school where all apps are generally packaged up into MSI's and if necessary with MST's included. This was used for staff laptops which were workgroup built until they were rebuilt onto the domain. If you need to use an MST you will need to create a batch file of some sort which calls msiexec with the /t or /transforms argument, then link into that batch file. If you want an idea I will be back at that school tomorrow afternoon and I can look at borrowing* the files to give you an idea of the structure you need. *Borrowing in the loosest terms as I wrote them in the first place.

Has anyone managed to insert a sharepoint calendar into Xibo? I am trying to put the schools monthly calendar into a region on the display, unfortunately I have no control over the sharepoint site as it is all housed at County. When loading the calendar page into a region it loads the whole page which includes the top and side navigation bars, I only want/need the monthly view itself. Ideally there will be some magic line of code which sharepoint uses to call the relevant page, if I can put that into a region on Xibo then I will be very happy. Any guidance gratefully recieved.

Quite probably, we were looking to continually rebuild a test machine and this was the only way we found to make it work. We are still in the learning stage though so any advice will be greatfully recieved, especially if we are committing a huge no no in using that command.

We had a similar issue and found that by using the following command it will clear things out and WDS will then give the machine an IP address and allow you to continue again. WDSUTIL /Delete-AutoAddDevices /DeviceType:ApprovedDevices

What do you use to achieve the list? is it dynamic or hard coded, I have seen a hard coded example but if it were dynamic would be very flexible as you would not have to change whenever you add OU's to AD Any chance of being cheeky and seeing your files? Cheers Marc

At the moment we are happy to use the logon user to create the computer name using the WDS naming feature. We set an OU for each class and within that give a user which only has rights to create a computer account/join computer to domain. The user will have the name of the room i.e. class1, using the WDS naming the first machine will be called room1-01, machine number2 = room1-02 etc I should point out that we only tend to work in primary/first and middle schools so the most machines we have in each room is around 30. In a lot of rooms there will only be a couple of machines so the ability to create the user on the server then visit each room once is our goal. Essentially RIS allowed us to do this really easily so we have tried to emulate this as closely as we could. The only other way I can think around this to only visit once would be to add a command to the task sequence which queried the AD structure and prompted you to select the OU needed and provide a computer name, then automatically run the wdsutil command before kicking off the setup process. However that would require some coding and the solution we have at the moment is a lot easier than that.

The main issue with prestaging into AD is that we are often either setting up a new network or completely rebuilding the whole school. I would not like to have to manually enter the values using wdsutil. We are trying to work on a solution which is fairly portable as we have with RIS/WDS Legacy, we work for the LA and support around 130 schools on a rolling rota. Having to use wdsutil to add all machines at the start of the project is not a fun prospect so we are trying to work around it.

Cookie_Monster So far we have avoided the Win XP bit but are using Server 2k8R2 with WDS to successfully deploy windows 7 onto the domain. We have found several bits of useful info on the net and as with all things much more useless stuff. If you like I can dig out some of the info we have used (which will not cause any issues with the management) I am making some assumptions about your setup but if it is the same as us you are creating users which you log on as in the PXE/Blue screen(forgot the name) stage which automatically gives the machine a name for the domain and puts the machine in the same OU. WDS can provide the computer name in the same way as RIS/WDS legacy does but if you have two machines running at a different speed the domain join is done as part of the 7 install (at the customisation part if I remember correctly) whichever machine gets to this part first gets the earliest available machine number in AD. The only way we have found around this so far without prestaging the GUID of each machine into AD is to start one machine and then wait until it gets far enough for the next one to not catch up in time to join first. The easiest way we have found so far to deploy XP is to use 2008R2 with Hyper-V and to set up a 2K3R2 server running within it using WDS legacy. As long as you set up the Forest and Domain functional levels to be 2003 then you can build and join a 2003 virtual box within the 2K8R2 host and dcpromo it as a DC within the domain, then you will have full replication between the servers so the AD is maintained when new machines are added. This has advantages and drawbacks, although you can install XP clients using this method you cannot use the Driver injection offered with WDS in 2K8R2 onto windows 7 builds. One way around this would be to maintain WDS on both servers but use the 2K3 for XP and the 2K8 for Win7, stopping the WDSServer service on whichever system is not needed at the time. Over time this will not be an issue as the XP clients will start to fade away and we will have shiny Win7 Clients everywhere. I will point out that so far everything we have done has been on test machines in the office and we have not ventured onto a live system yet. If you have any further questions feel free to ask as we are still trying out new things ourselves and are no way there yet. But it is nice to know that someone out there works the same way we do and that there will be someone else to bounce ideas off. The Guy I am working with at our place is registered on these forums as jon_boy1984 and I am sure he will post anything I have forgotten. Good luck.

That is brilliant thank you very much.

Hi Guys, I have managed to get my version of TightVNC that came with Lanview 3 mangled in file transfer so that it doesnt work any more. I know Lanview is now on V4 but as I had not donated I am not entitled to it. I was hoping that someone could make the V3 tightvnc installation file available for me. If not if someone could give me a walkthrough on how to modify a standard install of TightVNC to work with Lanview V3. Thanks in advance Marc

TheCrust I wouldn't say you've oversimplified it at all, that is pretty much what we have with RIS/XP at the moment. After reading your last post I had a play with just WAIK and managed to get a lot further than I had with the MDT approach. In various trials I have managed to get the machine to build standalone following the task sequence. A useful reference I have found is Mitch Tullock's articles on Vista and WDS which can be found here I just need to get the computer name provisioning and joining to the domain sorted then we will be there. Thanks for your advice. Marc

Thanks TheCrust, we have tinkered a little with the unattended procedures although we were going down the line of using MDT2010 as all we read led us to believe that was what we needed. We ran into the issue of needing to pre-stage machines for MDT. MDT appeals to us as we can use it for the driver injection and Task sequences. Also the support for powershell means that when we have worked it all out we can simply give our team a set of scripts which in theory should set everything up for them ready to go. Do you feel we would be better simply using WDS on its own with a modified wim file? This is one of those things we are playing with but unfortunately its a case of too much to do and too little time to do it in? Regards Marc

Bump Thought I might get a bit more response during the week rather than on a Friday night

Those files are the ones we played with in the office week before last. Don't appear to do quite what we want. Not on my work machine so not got skype up and running

Hey Jon, looks like we had the same idea at about the same time, I posted here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/o-s-deployment/41996-mdt-task-sequence-accomplish-prestaging-like-ris.html Not sure if the Mods want to merge our threads as we are both looking for the same thing for the same employer :-) See you Monday Marc

Hi all, I am a long time lurker who has got a load of great info from this site which I have been able to use in the schools I support. I work for an LA as a technician who along with my team support over 120 schools in our county. I have been playing with deploying Windows 7 from a Server 2008 machine running WDS and MDT2010, I have been able to get the system set up and make changes to the default Windows 7 image which is deployed so that info is pre-filled instead of prompting the user. I have got a lot of experience with using RIS/WDS Legacy to deploy XP machines which is what we currently use in many of the schools our team support. We use PXE boot to call the standard ms osc screens which prompt for username and password, In each OU we want to add machines to, we will have a user which has rights to join a machine to the domain. RIS/WDS is set to respond to all machines and to create a computer account in the same OU as the user, this means when we log on with an authorised user we have the computer account automatically created in the correct place so any GPO is applied from the beginning, also it has the advantage that we dont have to prestage any machines in AD as the machine is created with the correct naming convention and incremented automatically (set by the username e.g. Class1 will give a computer name of Class1-01, Class1-02 etc) The actual install of Windows is achieved by a modified .sif file so we can log on to a new machine and walkaway safe in the knowledge that the machine will do the rest for us. Okay enough background babble, the actual issue I am having is in emulating the RIS way of doing things, we are not open to the idea of manually prestaging machines due to the fact that we have a lot of schools and would need to set it up in each location, also I will be writing the draft procedures for out team to use and want to keep it as simple as possible. I would love to be able to PXE boot the machine, be prompted for the username and password and be able to step away. My understanding is that in RIS the machine will check in AD if the GUID/UUID exists for a computer account and if not creates a new machine record populated with the ID in the correct location. My thinking is that I will need a script to run at the beginning of the task sequence which 1.Prompts for a username 2.Gets the GUID of the machine 3.Makes contact with the AD 4.Checks for the GUID 5(a).If there set the computername and OU settings to be used later, 5(b).If not then create the computer account in the correct place and pass the values for later use. I have looked over the internet and have so far not managed to find anything which achieves the results I need, I guess its because W7 and MDT2010 are both new. I was lucky to find MSFN's Unattended Windows : Unattended Windows Introduction when I wanted to do research for XP but havent been too lucky yet. Over to you guys, I am open to ideas/advice/fully formed scripts which do it for me. Sorry for the length of post but I thought I should give as much info as I could to get started. Thanks in advance Marc

Absolutely spot on, well done. I was wondering if it was possible to edit the vbs so that it closed after a short timeout(as it does now) if there were no errors, but either writing an error log to a file on the server or staying open with a message if one/all of the checks fail. I have very little idea of what to change as I have only just started looking into vb scripting but i'm sure that some of the clever people on here would be able to knock it up in a few minutes. Just thought it may help for when we get a message saying little johnny couldnt access his work/shared area but no-one actually knows which bit or why. Heres hoping. Marc