Windows 10, Sysprep & MDT...

[MRaybone]

Hello!

 

I have MDT image captures and TS deployments for Windows 7 and 8.1. It's pretty simple - I install an OS, customize it, run the litetouch script which syspreps and boots me into image capture. I capture image, import it into MDT and that image is deployable. Easy.

 

Not for WIndows 10 - I'm at a complete loss. It seems many forums and blogs have various ways for me to mess with reams of powershell, vbscript, secret admin audit modes etc. I'd just like to customize - mainly software installations, I really don't care about the Start Menu - and then sysprep/capture in order to be able to deploy it via booting into MDT using WDS.

 

Is that so hard? Any help appreciated!

 

Cheers,

M.

[thadkew]

Hi,

 

It's not very hard. In fact, there are a couple ways you could do this:
build and capture like you're doing now and through the use of provisioning packages.

The latter is a little more involved but seems super fun. It can be used to take an OEM device and by using a simple package, it will transform it into a customized device to put on the network.

 

However, what you're looking for can be done quickly in a task sequence. In fact, our team took our Windows 8.1 B&C, added the Windows 10 VL media and just had to tweak a few things to get it to work properly.

 

What do you specifically need it to do? Do you want to remove the Microsoft installed apps? Do you want to set IE11 as the default browser? Do you want to customize the Task Bar?

 

I'm not sure what you've read, but capturing a Win10 image is not magic. It's pretty straight forward. I'd be happy to help.

[MRaybone]

Ok, thanks for your reply!

 

From what I've attempted, and subsequently read, sysprepping Windows 10 AFTER a system has been on the internet and updated, is pretty much a no no. Seems the updated apps or something break sysprep. Is it just as simple as leaving the system off the internet totally, customising applications and sysprepping as normal?

 

Our images are quite simple, just a few applications - Office 2016, Adobe Reader, Flash, Java, a password manager, that kind of thing. A customised Start Menu, taskbar and desktop would be great. We already do this for our Windows 7 images, but the process I use to customise the default user profile, I believe, is not valid in Windows 10.

 

We leave our images running as VMs so they're patched via a 3rd party solution, and re-image them periodically. Guessing this isn't going to work for Windows 10 if updating breaks sysprep?

 

Not too keen on provisioning applications and handling them in the TS, because the ones we do install are updated very frequently, and Office 2016/365 is basically an utter nightmare to deploy.

[thadkew]

M,

 

So your process is pretty similar to ours in that we build it and capture it. However, what we do is we have a build sequence that actually adds the updates in real time, so we don't let it bake for a day or so while updates are applied. In our environment, we're using SCCM for updating. It may be a good idea for you to collect the update and apply it during the build process. Simply add the updates to your deployment share, call it during the task sequence and then you can continue your capture at the end.

 

As far as customizing your start menu, this would all be controlled via an XML file. What we do is to create a package with the XML file (it's pretty simple) and then "install" that with a powershell script (essentially copy it to the proper folder).

To figure this one out, I went to this site to learn how to export to an XML.

The task bar was a little more involved. In our case, we don't want the Edge icon or the AppStore icon on the task bar. So, there are a few steps to resolve this:
1) you'll need to create a package that will add a reg key to the default hive. This reg key is essentially creating a "run once" command for HKEY_USERS\Default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Runonce

2) Then I created a folder called QuickLaunch\User Pinned\TaskBar with the shortcuts for the items we wanted available (very small: Outlook, IE11, command prompt, file explorer)

3) created a ps1 file that copies that folder to the right location.

 

I hope some of this helped. I'm sure I've forgotten to add a lot of stuff that you might need, but if you need more help, just let me know!

[MRaybone]

thadkew,

 

Thanks for the information - the steps on customising Start and Taskbar look very useful!

Not sure if I'll incorporate updates into the build. We use a 3rd party solution to patch - DesktopCentral. SCCM is great but too big for our organisation. I may just leave it to bake afterwards.

 

Still not sure if my MDT Image Capture TS is working properly. Doesn't seem to want to restart the Win10 system after I've run it. Not sure what it's doing, but it might be skipping past the capture section. The whole SkipCapture=NO thing in the cs.ini is a bit of a mystery to me. This very same capture TS was working fine on Win7 systems last week.

[MRaybone]

Do I need separate Deployment Shares for building and capturing???

[thadkew]

Can you post a screenshot of your TS?

Are you using a newly created PE image?

[thadkew]

Do I need separate Deployment Shares for building and capturing???

No. The deployment share you have would be fine.

[MRaybone]

Sorry for the mini rant - I sorted the capture thing. I had added JoinDomain= to cs.ini.