Capturing question

[jkeck]

Hello, love the site, lots of good information....

 

Firstly, I'm new to SCCM 2007 and I've been tasked with deploying Win 7 Pro across our company to the remote sites of which there are many.

I work in our corporate offices and have been installing/upgrading our users to Windows 7 as machines are replaced. I used WAIK to create a bootable UFD and have been using that to install a custom WIM that I created and captured using Win7's native sysprep. My custom .WIM files contain user/role-specific software packages. I have multiple installs based on departmental requirements and some of them even use the unattended.xml files to configure the machine with very little hands-on work.

 

My question: Is capturing a 7 Pro image using SCCM a requirement for being able to deploy 7 Pro?

[Peter van der Woude]

It's not a requirement, it just makes it easier...

[jkeck]

okay, so then i guess i'm a little confused as to how the tutorial would change for someone who already has a customized .wim file that is ready to be deployed. I was reading the tutorial at http://www.windows-n...ploy-windows-7/ and trying to figure out where the process would ultimately differ... if i copy the files that i'm currently using to install windows 7 pro manually, then all the files i would want to distribute/deploy would be included in that folder.

Is there a tutorial of how to create a deployment of Windows 7 using just the standard default OS files that would have been included on an original install dvd or in the iso that i can get from Microsoft?

 

having to spend the extra time to configure SCCM to capture a pc when i already have a custom .wim is me duplicating some of the work i've aleady done.

[jkeck]

maybe i'm not being clear enough with my question, let me try again.

 

Here's what I've done so far...

1. I loaded windows 7 pro sp1 onto a test computer.

2. I configured it with all the custom software, applications, drivers, etc.

3. I used to sysprep to create a generalized OOBE image and then I captured a customized .wim file with imagex.

4. I created a bootable Flash drive and copied all the same files and folders found in the original Windows 7 Pro SP1 ISO to the flash drive and overwrote the original install.wim file with the customized one i captured in #3 above.

5. I have been installing Windows 7 Pro SP1 using this flash drive system successfully for several months now... but now i need to begin deploying Win7 on a larger scale and to remote sites in our network.

 

I feel like building another machine and capturing the system with SCCM is a duplication of work that i've already done, i have been trying to wrap my head around how the deployment process/tutorial would change (the one found here http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/667-deploy-windows-7/ ) if i were to create everything using the installation files that I am already using.

 

I've searched the web for OS deployment tutorials using SCCM2007 and almost every single one includes steps for building a machine and capturing the image with SCCM, but in my case, i have already done this. maybe i'm missing some key step, or I'm ignorant to what's actually at play in the build/capture process, but I clearly need some more direction. I was hoping to find this in your forums. I just dont understand how doing the same thing twice makes anything 'easier'.

[Peter van der Woude]

When you've got your WIM file already you can continue with part two here: http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/1169-deploy-windows-7/

 

One of the reason the use a build and capture is to prevent all the manual work you are doing now to configure your WIM...