hi guys, as some of you may have noticed I wrote an 18 step guide to Zero Touch (bare metal unattended installs of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008), and now to back that up and get everyone on board I've put together some new guides for installing the backbone of Zero Touch, aka, SMS 2003 (sp2).

I've broken it down into the following components:-

Before installing SMS

Install and configure IIS

Installing SMS

part 1 - how can I install SMS 2003 SP2 ?

part 2 - how can I configure SMS 2003 ?

part 3 - SMS 2003 final configuration

After Installing SMS

how can I deploy an application using SMS ?

If you follow the topics above then you'll have a working SMS 2003 sp2 server in no time at all, deploying packages such as FireFox 2.0.0.12 (in my example). Once you get to that stage, you are ready for the next stage, which is Zero Touch.

I hope some of you find this information useful

cheers

anyweb

it is better the BDD lite touch as the zero touch..

lite touch is much easier to setup and doesnt require SMS installed at all, in addition lite touch will mean that someone will have to physically be at the computer to PXE boot it to the WDS/BDD server, and then choose the lite touch menu from the windows PE options, and then answer any questions that are asked (such as what apps to install etc) in the lite touch process itself, but after that Vista will install itself with no user interaction.

Zero touch on the other hand is for enterprise environments or large customer sites where you want to deploy Vista with no user action required at all, SMS takes care of that once you've followed my guides.

I'd advise anyone who's interested in this topic to start with lite touch, then once you get familiar with it move on to Zero Touch.

good luck !

cheers

anyweb