Firebird78

Thank you for your willingness to assist me grabben, would you be so kind as to provide me with a link? I'm not too familiar with the forums yet. Thanks in advance. ricktendo64, this sounds quite laborious - is it worth the effort, compared go grabbens suggestion? Thanks again, in advance.

Hi all. I'm using Windows System Image Manager to create answerfiles for unattended Windows 7 deployment. I'm just wondering how "deeply" into the Windows settings I can customize. Say, in folder options, I'd like to make sure that "Show hidden files and folders" is enabled, and on the processbar, I want to have "Combine when taskbar is full". Is this possilble in Windows SIM - or would I have to find some sort of registry tweak as a solution to these wishes? Thanks in advance.

I must have really misunderstood something quite basic here. I was under the impression that I could use MDT to build an unattended installation, and then install it onto a PC, and then customize that PC BEFORE I ran another Task Sequence to Sysprep and Capture. But from your latest post, I'm getting the impression that I have to do *EVERYTHING* from the MDT, in one single Task Sequence. That would include software to be installed onto clients and drivers and everything. Is this correct? The NIC in question is an Intel 82577 Gigabit Adapter

By "base image" do you then mean the Capture image I created from the boot.wim on the Windows DVD? If so, then I'm back to the problem with the impossible to add network drivers into said image. What exactly do you mean by "or do over." ?

I booted up into PE, and then opened a CMD prompt, where I executed the .vbs file. After reading your post, I tried mapping a drive (T:) to \\server\DeploymentShare\ and then executing this command: cscript.exe T:\Scripts\LiteTouch.wsf But I still get the same errors. What does this tell us? (Other than, if I want an image, I'm just S**T out of luck...)

So I made a Sysprep and Capture Task sequence, and all I got was this: ZTI Error - Unhandled error returned by LTISysprep: The system cannot find the file specified. (-2147024894 0x80070002) Litetouch deployment failed, Return Code = - 2147024894 0x80004005 I tried reviewing the logfile, but to me it just looks like a wall of senseless text.

Nope. No network at all. Tried everything I could think of in an attempt to get the network drivers into the Capture image. Doesn't seem possible...... I even tried to create the Capture image from the WinPE image I already have, because the drivers for the NIC on my test-pc is already there, and working. But this Capture image didn't have network either. I'm on the verge of just surrendering to capturing the image onto the reference PC itself, and then boot it up into the LiteTouch PE again, just to copy it to the server. That just seems so... Retarded! Am I totally off here, when I want to install a PC, work on it, sysprep it and then capture it with the intend to mass-deploy it??? How do other people solve this problem?

The LTI wizard will look like it always does until you choose the sysprep and capture task you create. It'll change after that. If you've already done this, you can just add a basic Win7 boot.wim image as a boot image to WDS, right-click on it and create a capture image, and then add that to your WDS boot images. You can use the capture image to capture a Win7 machine that's already sysprep'ed - you don't need MDT for that (it's easier to do with MDT if you create a TS, but that's neither here nor there if you've already sysprep'ed your image). Cluberti, so far your help has been invaluable, and I appreciate that greatly. However, I need your help once more. I have created my capture image now, following your advise. I booted the reference PC up with the capture image, and the WDS Image Capture Wizard comes up just fine. The problem is that I cannot connect to my WDS server from the Wizard (Ticking the checkbox "Upload image to a WDS server (optional)). The error message given is: "The network name cannot be found." (I get the same error if I attempt to connect via the server's IP instead of hostname, so I guess that rules out a DNS problem). Then I figured, that the reason must be that the Capture Image doesn't have the ethernet drivers for the reference PC, so I injected those into my capture image, using DISM. But still I get the same error in the WDS Image Capture Wizard. So it looks like I'm stuck again. Any thoughts?

I don't quite follow. If I do that, and run the LTI Wizard, it looks like normal, so I'm afraid I'll lose all the changes on the PC (since it will wipe the disk if I allow it to install a new OS first. Note that I already sysprepped and generalized the PC. I just want to capture an image of it now - like we did with Norton Ghost in the "good" old day (partition-to-image).

I tried to be clear in the topic, but it's a bit tricky to keep it both short AND precise. Apologies. I have a PC that has been installed "from scratch" using a Win7 DVD. PC has been joined to a domain, and a user have installed and cunfigured a handfull of heavy programs onto it. Is there a way for me to capture an image of this PC, using MDT/WDS? If so, how? When I want to prepare a task sequence, MDT wants to install an OS first, then sysprep and capture it, and I don't want that. Any thoughts?

I just tried "cleaning" my DeploymentShare for all Imported Operating Systems, and then importing the x64 OS again, and then make a complete regeneration of the boot images. Same error. In my desperation, I even tried with a "standard" Win7 x64 DVD (as opposed to the Win7 x64 Volume DVD I've been using so far). Again, same error. The server that's running it all is a 2003 R3 32-bit. Does this make a difference? Edit: Finally found the solution! Turns out I missed one important thing when configuring WDS: wdsutil /set-server /architecturediscovery:yes That made all the difference.

That was pretty much what I figured. I've imported both an x64 and an x86 OS into my deployment share, and created answerfiles for both architectures with SIM. Then I made Task Sequences for the first install. As stated, it works like a charm with x86, while I cannot even boot into WinPE x64. That puzzles me.

I made my changes to the deployment share, selected "Update deployment share" from the Workbench, and afterwards, I added the bootimage to WDS. x86 works like a charm, x64 does not. What can cause this? I imported an x64 OS i wanted to deploy, and I've made an x64 Task Sequence to install my "Bare Metal" (is this the correct term according to the deployment lingo?), but this task sequence is not visible when I boot from the x86 PE image. I guess that's logical enough though.

Thanks for this answer! I have another question. I keep getting an error "The Windows Boot Configuration Data file does not contain a valid OS entry." Status: 0xc0000098 File: \Boot\BCD What I'm trying to do, is create a 64-bit PE boot image, and I just cannot get it to work. Any advise?