[mdt] Surface Pro 4 MDT/WDS USB boot

I'm having a nightmare with deploying an image to our Surface Pros.

PXE booting via USB adaptor seems flakey and I've given up for the minute. My plan is either boot from USB to the WDS server (first choice) or deploy a complete image by USB.

I've followed various guides but can't get it boot, other than with a USB created with the windows media creation tool - which obviously only installs Win Pro 10 and doesn't have my customisations.

Any suggestions for a tried and trusted guide?

Thanks

I'm having a nightmare with deploying an image to our Surface Pros.

 

PXE booting via USB adaptor seems flakey and I've given up for the minute. My plan is either boot from USB to the WDS server (first choice) or deploy a complete image by USB.

You can either try making a USB boot device, which is essentially the MDT boot ISO on a stick, which I did from the guide below yesterday:

https://its.uiowa.edu/support/article/1985

Or you want to create the entire offline media set

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/deploy-windows-mdt/deploy-a-windows-10-image-using-mdt#a-href-idsec10ause-offline-media-to-deploy-windows-10

You can either try making a USB boot device, which is essentially the MDT boot ISO on a stick, which I did from the guide below yesterday:

https://its.uiowa.edu/support/article/1985

 

The link to download the ISO from UoI requires a password.

I've tried to create a discover disk myself through WDS, but I'm not getting anywhere.

In the WDS I go to Boot Images, then right click on the Light Touch Windows PE (x64) and choose "Create Discover Image". I then fill in the details of where to save it, but it fails with "There is not enough space on the disk." As it's a server share, I know that's not true.

I also tried "Export Image", which creates a wim file. When I copy that into the USB, it doesn't create a bootable disk (which doesn't surprise me, but I thought I'd give it a go....)

The link to download the ISO from UoI requires a password.

 

I've tried to create a discover disk myself through WDS, but I'm not getting anywhere.

You need to use the iso image from your MDT server in your environment. If you've generated one when updating your MDT share it will be in the MDT Share\Boot folder, usually in the format PE_.iso

Mount that and copy the contents of it to the prepped USB. That should then USB boot and allow you to connect to the MDT share to build the device.

Hope that helps.

You need to use the iso image from your MDT server in your environment. If you've generated one when updating your MDT share it will be in the MDT Share\Boot folder, usually in the format PE_.iso

Mount that and copy the contents of it to the prepped USB. That should then USB boot and allow you to connect to the MDT share to build the device.

 

Hope that helps.

You know when you know you're doing something daft, but can't see what because it's become urgent....

You need the proper surface usb to ethernet adapters rather than third party ones - I have a lot of surface pro 4's that boot to mdt ok

Now I know how, this is just as easy and much cheaper! Probably not worth the amount of time I've spent failing to work it out....

I know this is quite an old post - but found this guide that has worked to help laptops with no network port to image through WDS

http://www.sysadminlab.net/deployment/create-bootable-usb-for-mdt

I had no success in getting a Lenovo laptop to boot from a USB network adapter but once it booted into LiteTouch through this simple guide, it accepted that it does have a network adapter and seems to be happy deploying.

You need to use the iso image from your MDT server in your environment. If you've generated one when updating your MDT share it will be in the MDT Share\Boot folder, usually in the format PE_.iso

Mount that and copy the contents of it to the prepped USB. That should then USB boot and allow you to connect to the MDT share to build the device.

 

Hope that helps.

I must be getting old. It was in the back of my mind that I'm sure I've done this before (make a bootable USB to connect to an MDT network deployment) but rather than trial and error it I thought I'd run a quick Google search. One of the results was my own forum post from 6 and a bit years ago. Fingers crossed I was right