any Windows 7 sysadmins here? - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

Hemi-Cuda · 03-17-2011, 01:41 PM

so our company is slowly starting to migrate from XP to Windows 7, and currently we don't have any base images to use so each new PC that gets it has it installed from scratch. i've been trying to build an image that will do basic stuff like autojoin the domain, set the timezone, and setup a default user profile (desktop background, icons, IE settings, etc). i'm trying to follow Microsoft's help guide for the Windows Automated Installation Kit to setup an answer file and use sysprep to get the PC ready, but it just isn't working. i build my answer file, use the command prompt to start sysprep and tell it to use the answer file, but it just doesn't work. after a reboot i'm back at the first startup screen and none of my customized settings are imported

anyone have experience with Windows 7 sysprep? it seems so much more bloody complicated than it is in WinXP and it's making me go mental, i've spent far too many hours screwing around with this

Rathji · 03-17-2011, 01:47 PM

MDT 2010 will build your images for you, almost automatically. Don't know if that is the answer to your question, but I never had any issues building an image and I don't know sysprep from a hole in the motherboard. it has been many months since I did that stage of our testing, so maybe I am just not remembering it correctly.

EDIT: Quick google lead me to this document (PDF) which seems to describe the basic steps I used. I am pretty sure I used technet directly though.

Hemi-Cuda · 03-17-2011, 01:55 PM

i've never seen MDT 2010 before, but it looks even more complicated then what i'm currently trying to do. all i want is to setup a Windows 7 PC that i can take a ghost image from and put it on a USB hard drive, that document you linked talks about setting up a server for remote deployments (which we currently don't do)

Rathji · 03-17-2011, 02:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

i've never seen MDT 2010 before, but it looks even more complicated then what i'm currently trying to do. all i want is to setup a Windows 7 PC that i can take a ghost image from and put it on a USB hard drive, that document you linked talks about setting up a server for remote deployments (which we currently don't do)

It might be easier to just use the MDT technet documentation.

You want to use the MDT method w/o SCCM. The server is simply the PC that you are building the image on, then you can deploy with Zero touch (ZTI), or light touch(LTI). I am pretty sure both of those can be used to put onto a USB key or DVD to deploy to individual machines, but it could be just the LTI. Using it, I pretty easily built a DVD that could install all of our software at the same time, using a single DVD. There was pain with drivers, because our hardware is not at all standard. You could also use it to do remote deployments, but like you said you don't need that.

I am not at work right now, but when I get back into the office I will review my notes on our stuff and see if I can help you then.

mykalberta · 03-17-2011, 02:55 PM

We have images on USB thumb drives using SCCM.

It installs what we need, we need to change time zone, change computer name reboot, add to domain reboot etc.

Hemi-Cuda · 03-17-2011, 04:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mykalberta

We have images on USB thumb drives using SCCM.

It installs what we need, we need to change time zone, change computer name reboot, add to domain reboot etc.

see i've managed to build a base image like that, it has all the software i need loaded, but i want to be able to have it join the domain automatically with pre-loaded credentials, and to have a customized default user profile setup so that any new user profile that gets created has the same desktop background, icons, IE settings, etc. it was super easy in Windows XP using Setup Manager and sysprep, but now Microsoft has complicated the hell out of it in Windows 7

Rathji · 03-17-2011, 05:46 PM

^^ then you already have most of what MDT does, although I do recall a way to create your answer file, but I wasn't overly concerned about it at the time.

Meelapo · 03-17-2011, 10:55 PM

What you need is Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 (AIK 2010). It's not complicated once you get the hang of it.

What I ended having in the end is whenever I needed to image a laptop or desktop with Windows 7 I just plugged in a USB key and booted from that, I would get a menu and I picked the image I wanted (images were hosted on a server) and it would install the OS as well as any drivers and software I needed (i.e. antivirus, etc.).

If I can find the documentation I used I'll let you know.

I think this might be it. I have a Mac so I can't read docx files:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...e-7c0a1ccb83a5

Hemi-Cuda · 03-17-2011, 11:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meelapo

What you need is Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 (AIK 2010). It's not complicated once you get the hang of it.

What I ended having in the end is whenever I needed to image a laptop or desktop with Windows 7 I just plugged in a USB key and booted from that, I would get a menu and I picked the image I wanted (images were hosted on a server) and it would install the OS as well as any drivers and software I needed (i.e. antivirus, etc.).

If I can find the documentation I used I'll let you know.

I think this might be it. I have a Mac so I can't read docx files:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...e-7c0a1ccb83a5

i mentioned in my original post that i already used AIK, and it's not very intuitive at all. i built my answer key, sysprep seems to accept it, but it ends up doing nothing after it reboots the system

Rathji · 03-18-2011, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

i mentioned in my original post that i already used AIK, and it's not very intuitive at all. i built my answer key, sysprep seems to accept it, but it ends up doing nothing after it reboots the system

In my *limited* experience, I have not been able to get an answer key to work at all since XP (with SBS 2008 migration, W2k8, Vista and 7). I have not had the need be strong enough to try and figure out why they didn't work, but it always was a slight annoyance.

bomber317 · 03-18-2011, 08:30 AM

Were you running a WDS server before for your XP images?

We just upgraded our WDS server to the latest version and stuck a Win 7 image on it and it auto-joins the domain.

The details are a little sketchy at the moment because of St. Patrick's yesterday

and I haven't uploaded an image in a while but I believe we just setup a machine that is close to what we want, sysprep it, and use a capture image on the WDS server to capture it. There's an answer file to modify as well.

Hemi-Cuda · 03-18-2011, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bomber317

Were you running a WDS server before for your XP images?

We just upgraded our WDS server to the latest version and stuck a Win 7 image on it and it auto-joins the domain.

The details are a little sketchy at the moment because of St. Patrick's yesterday

and I haven't uploaded an image in a while but I believe we just setup a machine that is close to what we want, sysprep it, and use a capture image on the WDS server to capture it. There's an answer file to modify as well.

no server, all images were put on our PC's locally with a USB hard drive. it's not a big enough company yet to worry about remote imaging. and the answer key is where i'm running into the problem, i create my unattend.xml file through AIK but none of the settings take effect when i run it through sysprep. i'm not sure though if i have the right components selected in AIK for the answer file, or if i'm using the correct command line syntax for sysprep

Hemi-Cuda · 03-18-2011, 05:00 PM

well i finally got it, i followed the steps in this guide and my unattended setup is working now

http://theitbros.com/sysprep-a-windo...tart-to-finish

the only thing i'm missing is auto-joining the domain, but apparently that's a real issue in Windows 7 sysprep that Microsoft hasn't fixed yet. so if that's the only thing i'll need to do manually i'm ok with that

TorqueDog · 03-19-2011, 10:02 PM

I've done this before and I tried it the old fashioned way of using a Ghost image and... ugh. Never again.

AIK and MDT with a Windows Deployment Server worked great for desktops. As an exercise, I used it for creating a Server 2008 R2 domain controller with pre-created group policy objects imported, new user scripts, and all roles (except Edge/UM) of Exchange 2010 silently installed and configured.

I strongly recommend that route if you have the time to do it and a server that you can use as a deployment server. It's fantastic.