cluberti

So instead of using a (pre-beta, no less) Windows interface designed for touch, you used Linux instead? I know you're a little nutty , but that seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face... Also, the builds everyone have access to are simply developer preview (and I'll be honest, the code quality is definitely pre-beta too), so hopefully people will at least give the OS a chance once it gets to the beta phase. Not you specifically, 'cause I know you're tied to Vista and don't like Win7 much, but I speak more generally.

Might want to run process monitor while attempting to open that msc file (it logs as soon as it's run, so open procmon, repro the issue, then file > save the log quickly). That should at least tell what library it isn't finding as registered properly.

Unfortunately, no - I ran into this myself, and Novell confirmed that to have Win7 clients working properly without random issues (we saw network disconnections on mapped drives and logon failures), we needed to upgrade the Novell backend. Since we were migrating off of Novell onto AD in this environment, we lived with it for a few months until we were able to move everything off to the new Windows environment, and then we decommissioned the Novell environment and removed the Novell client from the client machines.

It doesn't matter what's in the WIM files, you can merge them. Any files that differ will not be stored single instance, so even though the images you are combining have been minimized, the resulting WIM file may take up slightly more space than it would otherwise.

People are just pining for the days when Hasek *was* a good backstop. Miller stops shots reasonably well (but you are correct - it's better defense) so he gets to be "great" for some reason.

When you select a task sequence, you have the option to capture it. Also, you can create task sequences simply for sysprep and capture. What you need to do is make sure that customsettings.ini and bootstrap.ini in your deployment share both have the proper UserID and UserPassword information set to allow logon - basically, map Z: to \\server\share$ using those credentials, and then browse to Z:\scripts in a cmd prompt and run cscript LiteTouch.wsf. This will realize you've already mapped Z, run LiteTouch.vbs against bootstrap.ini in the share, and show you your task sequences. Select your sysprep and capture sequence, and that should sysprep your machine, and reboot to PE to capture it via imagex to the location specified when you ran the task sequence.

Assuming you're logged on as an Administrator, run "lusrmgr.msc" and see what happens.

Yup - that's not hard to do either.

More of the same, more or less, at least for awhile longer. Then, probably what happened the last time Jobs left - unfortunately, this time Apple can't hire him back again.

Worst case scenario, I can provide you some "lab VMs" that were built using the trial time-bombed media available from Microsoft that I use to build my labs and do my blog posts.

Yes, if you do actually want those programs, you'll need to install them. You should still add the base drivers to your installation sequence, so that you at least have video or network working when you start - then use WMI filtering or other logic to install the apps post-deploy as necessary. This is how I do it, and how many others do this as well (as you can see from Trip's post).

As to the first error, make sure you add your custom WIM like any other OS (there are guides by the Deployment Guy's blog and others how to add custom WIM files to MDT). As to the second, you shouldn't need to install the Hyper-V guest components to Windows 7 or 2008 R2 - they are already included in the driver.cab of the OS. You only need to add components to Vista and older OSes.

Indeed - I find a lot of times you can simply install the target OS on that hardware, add all drivers, and then use a tool like Driver Magician to extract those drivers to use with your deployment solution later.

True, but if you're building your machines on a build VLAN or separate network from the internet (you *are* doing that, right? ), it will simply fail without a connection to the internet. It's not pretty, but then again, the public package was never really designed for automated installation. There are ways if you're an OEM, though.

The only real option is to get a network trace from the VM server, and make sure the boot media is indeed using the right customsettings.ini and bootstrap file contents. There's no reason for this to happen, so either the VM is getting the wrong creds, or the lookup to the DC fails. Again, another reason to use hyper-v .

Hyper-V works fine, and in fact if your primary goal is to work with Windows virtual machines, you'll find Hyper-V to be better (again, assuming you don't need gigantic enterprise cluster features, full lab copy environments from production, etc - Hyper-V is "good enough" for most everything a user or SMB would need, and has the added bonus of being free, works best with Windows client OSes, and doesn't require any additional additons/etc for Windows 7 / 2008 R2 guest OSes (or higher, including Windows 8).

Microsoft has never admitted any mistakes with Vista - while the driver model was a huge change with less warning than OEMs would have liked (or in fact sometimes needed), there was nothing specifically wrong with Vista as an OS. However, as with all Microsoft OSes (the professional versions at least - not the home variants), "downgrading" has always been a possibility if the OEM offered it. This would not be Microsoft's doing, however, and is only allowed if the OEM is willing to allow a customer to purchase a machine with a Vista (or Windows 7) license, and provide them also with a Windows XP license (for example).

Then you're trying too hard . In all seriousness, this works as documented in my blog, and what I did there was perhaps 200-level work (it can be even easier, just not as extendable/malleable). What specifically are you trying to achieve (at a high level), step by step? I can help, you just have to slow down, get back to basics, and allow us to help you work it out. Trust me, learning this will be *very* beneficial in the long run .

These work, as I just tested. You will have to give us some details as to what isn't working and what you are doing .

What OS are we talking about here, specifically? Also, note that it's far easier to call setup.exe from an application package if VMPlatform=Hyper-V (both ways can work, but doing it during post-install is much, much easier to maintain).

Agreed - once DNS is broken, so is all of active directory. Until you fix that, you shouldn't really try to do anything else with it .

I've never heard of a VM not handling an unattended file before, but it's always a good idea to check if you're having VM issues. Can you show (via a screenshot or listing) where your unattended file is on your installation source?

Actually, given it is a Linux it's probably asking you if you have it to see if it can avoid loading the serial driver, and stick with the USB one (which can be loaded and unloaded without much issue, unlike the old serial bus driver). The question is actually funny if you read it as "choose one of the three, yes or no" as well if you look at it quickly without thinking too hard - which I am certainly not doing at 12:45AM ET .

All of the shutdown time here appears to be because a WMI provider takes forever to shutdown, but the CPU time is all in a thread in the shutdown logonui.exe process (showing you the shutdown status screen). To get anything useful out of this, you're going to need to take a new trace with only the following options: xbootmgr -trace shutdown -traceflags dispatcher+latency -stackwalk readythread+threadcreate+cswitch+profile -resultPath c:\shutdown_trace

Is it just Virtualbox, or does this also reproduce in (for example) VMWare player or Virtual PC?