Extreme confusion in regards to deploying XP with WDS/MDT

[Dustin]

I have been using the Microsoft Deployment Workbench to deploy images via CD. I found out now that the WDS serveices needed to be setup in order for PXE to work.

 

Does WDS take the place of the MDW, as far as adding drivers and updates to an image?

 

This stuff is extremely complicated, and I feel very lost.

 

We have done the following:

 

Setup Microsoft Deployment Toolkit with a distribution share.

Created the light touch PE CD

 

Capturing:

Installed a base Windows XP on all different models of our computers, and extracted the drivers.

Added the drivers to the Desktop Workbench

captured the sysprepped image via command line using imagex (because we removed the "capture image" from the wizard.hta on the deployment disk)

Added the image to the desktop workbench

 

Deploying:

Booted to CD

Went through the wizard

Let sysprep do its magic

At this point, sometimes it will boot, sometimes it will not. (see below)

 

Sometimes we are still experiencing "Inaccessible boot device" or "unmountable boot volume" errors. We have also experienced corrupt registries, and systems that get caught in a complete reboot loop. While other times (before and after these problem systems, the image will deploy to the same model of system without a problem.) What are we doing incorrectly?

 

 

Today I just setup the Windows Deployment Services per the guides provided, and I haven't had an opportunity to test deploying an image, but I wasn't sure how I could just take the image, and it be generic enough with the drivers inserted, etc. without first using the Desktop Workbench.

 

I believe I have a gross misunderstanding of how all these tools work together to manage and deploy systems. Please help!

 

Thanks in advance,

Dustin

[anyweb]

Does WDS take the place of the MDW, as far as adding drivers and updates to an image?

 

no, Windows deployment services is used to deploy boot images which are used to deploy operating system installation images

 

MDT is an add on application, which allows for greater customisation of your images and applications and drivers, and how you can deploy them in lite touch scenarios

 

This stuff is extremely complicated, and I feel very lost.

 

yes it can be overwhelming at times, but go through all the guides here and you'll be an expert in no time ;-)

 

Sometimes we are still experiencing "Inaccessible boot device" or "unmountable boot volume" errors. We have also experienced corrupt registries, and systems that get caught in a complete reboot loop. While other times (before and after these problem systems, the image will deploy to the same model of system without a problem.) What are we doing incorrectly?

 

it depends on what you are doing, if you are trying to deploy an image from one type of hardware onto another type of hardware then inaccessible boot device could be normal, but without more info it's hard to tell

[Dustin]

Well my further question, is using the MDT the proper way to inject drivers into the Windows XP image?

 

Also, I see that some Dell models have a .cab that include all drivers needed for that model. I don't see any of the models that I use on their site. Is there a place I can go to download the cab files for other models?

[RGB09]

I thought, for what's it worth that you had to inject drivers using imageX and such tools... are you talking about network drivers or other drivers such as video, sound etc? I think this can be injected via WAIK, I think, never had to try it myself, as I just create the image of the PC I want, with all the software I need and all the drivers already installed... I then SYSPREP it and capture the image onto the WDS server, and deploy it that way, using an unattended.xml file and sysprep.inf... so far it works, although I still have some issues (see my previous posts)I hope this helps, I am still fairly new to WDS... most of my experience has been with RIS (4 years)