jamitupya

Nice to see some recognition for your work Niall

Edit: for unattended.xml, etc only. is your image the same for all clients? software etc.... you could just not use the VLK key, then build a batchfile to load on first boot to windows with a series of choices.. press 1 for abc, press 2 for def, etc ... then the corresponding batchfile runs, kicks a bunch of customization scripts etc. little complex but would work... i did for a project once, worked well....but is tedious to build

this can be done MANY ways. i have built this using lpksetup as per http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744278(WS.10).aspx or in the TS when specifying the unattended file, we use a query against the client IP address and then apply the correct apply windows settings and a customized unattended.xml per country... this worked well.

i did the same thing for a VDI client at my last company.... checkout halfway down the post here http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2855-build-and-capture-windows-7-enterprise-for-vdi/ for something very similar... we just put a batch file with a bunch of stuff.... .and a simple pause command....once completed, press space bar to continue the TS.... i also have a wsus update script included there, but its not provided... just referenced.... its easy to find one online to automate it though

yes it will work. its more to do with windows than sccm. sccm is just the method to apply. that post has various options on how to apply

same result? can you send us your smsts.log

Its a shame you've decided to move on, but to be honest, i understand your pain, it isn't easy to figure out this product but i can say, give it some time, spend an hour running through it every week. You say you want this thread removed, i'll say now i feel this is a valuable thread in terms of internet knowledge. it didn't help you admittedly but did and does show a sampling of the "un-initiated"s experiences, and they are unfortunately all to common. Whilst i get your frustration in not being answered, let me put my 2 cents in: follow this to find out how to access the SMSTS.log Understand the product your asking for assistance on is an Enterprise System. its designed to support enterprise businesses in minimizing support costs. it handles this extremely well and i have deployed this to multiple global private and govt organizations with 30,000-350,000+ client seats and have done so with a relatively small team. This does NOT excuse its complexity, just is to show you the product is very suited to the task of large scale and small scale distribution alike. Whilst i get how you want to achieve your task, please understand that we as a community understand the product well, anyweb maybe an MVP but he is a global leader in operating systems deployment and is recognized for this. Peter is a well published administrator. I have little public profile but we are all here to help the community out, have you EVER had a serious issue with a technology you've had hands-on experience with for less than a month, and a community who can fix it instantly? Granted i think as a community we missed a great opportunity here to help out a new member and we missed the mark, im sorry about that. All i can ask is if we can help you through this in a serious, structured method to help you understand the technology a bit better and the industry best practices. Best Practices are important and are required to evolve.... 10 years ago, ghost was a BP. but now it is most definitely not, and this is from MULTIPLE standpoints. ghost is no longer a good option because of its limitations and also licensing and technologies have evolved. for example, i used ghost to deploy 1000NT4 workstations and windows 98 desktops. perfect, no HAL changes or serious configuration changes. Now we have formalized SOE's and a tiered deployment style for easier management of the business processes. You have corporate security groups that need to test against a master image, you can no longer have a collection of master or "gold" disk, its tedious, inefficient and to be honest, a bad way of thinking as applications that are updated mean you need to start your process all over again. Time wasting is something i think all engineers are averse to.... I think the way you want to do it is do-able, but the wrong way to go about it. if you can show us your logs from the above we would all be more than happy to help out if you still would like to learn for the future. On another note, check out these posts by myself and questions by others... these will give you a better idea of how big organizations deploy the services and why. it maybe that you were so frustrated and in the wrong mindset that it just wasn't gunna happen! we've all been there and done that, stress less, we are happy to help. You can grab me on IM if you want to work through it personally or keep it here. Tiered deployments - give you an understanding of what to put where in the process. we can explain more if needed Scripted installations - vnext based and aimed at VDI, but easily adaptable back to sccm, ignore the VDI components I think this is easier personally than ghost as most of the process is automated. but each to their own. more directly related to your post, OEM windows 7 professional keys and installations are generally not compatible with VL keys or media. that is just for your reference. Anyway, im no longer involved in infrastructure teams as of this years but i will check on this again to help you out if you still need/want assistance.

dependent on the printer, yes you can, if it is an installer, run the silent installer or extract it and load the drivers this way.... include these drivers in your driver pack and bobs your uncle you can also deploy this style "software" via GPO i though, so maybe an option also.

Sorry guys, i've changed jobs to a significantly different business path, i'll try and get a working deploy TS to you all asap but zero guarantee...

make sure you set the permissions from the root of the source directory. replace ALL the permissions on files, folders and subdirectories and select to replace and inherit on subdirectories... try that.... *source directory e.g. d:¥applications¥ then if your DP's are on separate servers you'll need to re-acl these as well..

from memory, this key can be created automatically with one of the later ms updates (without office being installed)....try using a nested key specific to an office app... like word or the registered users name... a thought anyway...

are they customized per machine? is there any reason you cant just create a package with the ini file and run something like a batch file from here http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2758-how-can-i-copy-files-from-a-package/ ? we generally pickup a series of cfg and ini files via a network share this same way....

Hi Martin, yes it's possible to delegate a semblance of access, but you would need to do a detailed design prior. if this is th way, I have deployed a similar setup to an organization with much the same reasoning. They required centralized reporting however the costs for toolsets and licensing were borne by the BU's. We created a primary site for each BU hosted on a VM in the datacenter and then only gave the enterprise admins rights to all primary sites. reporting setups and cofigs become a nightmare though so keep that in mind for any custom reports you may build. other than that it's achievable. remember to install a SLP and Failback service point in your central site and it should be ok. FYI, this worked for our client because patching was handled by an enterprise security team, and the SOE was managed by the central site. one downside of doing it like thi is your datacenter storage costs go through the roof :-(

Welcome, difficult question..... the laptops are a concern but not a huge concern to be honest. also, the number of clients and DP, are relative to the size of the sites involved. we work with every site with 50 devices or more has a DP, and every country has a MP (basic setup, things get complicated real quick) DirectAccess is a series of configurations hooked into group policy.... yes those pc's will be manageable however this is really dependant on your configuration and its firewall settings (if using UAG its possible) i need t dig out sizing guides, will try and grab them tomorrow for you

Yup, as anyweb says, just right click the TS, select properties. select your boot image.

put the use toolkit package before the Install roles and features. select your MDT Package.

have you got the run package for MDT set before you try and run this? keeping in mind that if the TS reboots the server you need to load the package again ...maybe even do a gather....

yes, only thing i have found subcollections for so far is for patching thursdays.... but even then its debatable

when your creating the VM, select custom vm, then select windows xp or linux, it should then give you the option for IDE.... alternatively, http://www.seopher.com/articles/configuring_vmware_for_ide_rather_than_scsi_good_for_installing_linux_ ignore the OS info etc, that is just to suggest the best "profile" to use....

mmm...i've often wondered this but never managed to get around to trying it. We generally just use the method you described. We have a BIT different take on it also as we used a GPO on the OU to add it to standard LOB applications for the Site. let us know if which way you'll head as i'd be curious to see how you go about it.

Sorry, just to clarify, you want to just use MDT/WDS for litetouch or do you want to use SCCM? Ignoring all the problems upto now...So we understand you current state. SCCM Server with MDT and WDS installed - Enabled PXE Role - Tested Boot to SCCM BOOT.WIM successfully. - Without SCCM PXE - Booting WDS produces access violation error. general grasp?

Are you talking about vmwware esx or workstation?

4005 is generally a permissions error. I'd confirm the permissions are correct on your smp share and your usmt packages to start with :-)

On the SCCM Side, You can follow this guide to extend the schema For the rest, we have used SCCM and VMware clusters alot and find very few issues with them once you get teething issues out of the way, this includes things like vlan's/trunking etc. it can be a pain especially if your using the newer Nexus V1000 vSwitch for vSphere.. basic things i assume you'll sort out when thinking logically about it.... We separate our SCCM Central Servers from DP's as this is going to cause you alot of traffic, for our first deployment we have a couple of DP's sitting beside our SCCM Provider to handle this workload. its choice and licensing though... so go with what you feel your environment can handle... 170 WS's id say is achievable... we run between 200-500 a session during a deployment.... but just be aware its not a simple set and forget which is where alot of deployments come undone... you need to set them off and hang around for an hour or so... especially if multi casting as in our experience it seem to be still a tad on the flakey side... nothing worse than 80users showing up Monday morning without a PC to use.... I would suggest you stick with smaller groups over a few nights, ESPECIALLY if migrating from XP.... Is there any reason you couldn't script your pc naming? There's some more to go with all this but i suggest you pick a pilot target of 10-20 desktops and push it out on a Wednesday night so you have a couple of days to iron out the kinks.... and there will be kinks. For your driver issue, i'd be using SCCM if possible, and be building Driver Packs per http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2428-how-to-create-a-driver-package/ .... read the whole post, checkout how to query WMI and install drivers that way if you have more concerns. Im not a huge fan of using just MDT and WDS to deploy, to much extra scripting required to get your basics setup..... this is just my experience and 2cents