MDT2010, Win7: don't load desktop while post installing

[derniwi]

Hi,

we are using MDT 2010 and I've choosen to deploy a captured Win 7 image to our clients. During the deployment there should some additional software be installed regarding on the hardware.

But I don't like that the explorer.exe ist loaded because it will start the complete desktop. On Win XP the RunOnceEx key from the registry was used to install software and while the software was setting up the explorer.exe wasn't loaded.

Is there a possibility in Windows 7 and MDT 2010 to prevent loading the Win desktop until the setup has finished? The problem is while the installation admin is logged in a user could do enough things which he / she shouldn't.

One thing I could do is to run an early task which lock's the mouse and the keyboard. And after the installation I could unlock the system.

I'm not sure if the password protected screen saver would be an alternative beacause I install at least one piece of software whichs setup is controlled by AutoIt / AutoHotKey.

Any ideas?

Best regards, Nils.

[cluberti]

If you're deploying software to a machine and don't want the user to have interaction with it, you're better off using audit mode and having the software install at that point before the user gets the machine. You can use RunOnce in Windows 7, but if the software requires the admin to do the installs and the user is at the machine at that time already, there's not a whole lot you can do (due to the way Vista/Win7 is designed, it's not quite like XP and it's not as foolproof, especially if the user has any sorts of admin privileges on the box).

You could also consider preinstalling the apps into your WIM file that you're deploying as well, or using something else for deployment like SCCM which allows for zero-touch installations.

[derniwi]

Hi,

we don't like to have too much images so I create a "medium sized" image with applications for all machines and capture this. This image will distributed to all machines and than the software which is different for some kind of machines will be installed. But now I have to find a way that a user could not break the installation because he / she thinks it is finíshed (the windows desktop is shown) or try what the setup user could do on the network.

Regards, Nils.

[cluberti]

You might indeed consider using something like RunOnce then, and use that to bootstrap all of your additional installations rather than MDT task sequences.