MDT 2010 Capture Image

[Firebird78]

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?

[cluberti]

Create a sysprep and capture task sequence in MDT, and use that (you need to map a drive to the deploymentshare$ folder that contains the TS, and manually run \scripts\LiteTouch.wsf to launch the wizard). Note that you'll lose your domain membership (sysprep will kill it), and any user-specific configuration (although you can use the copyprofile section of the answer file to save most of that when re-deployed).

[Firebird78]

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).

[nice_guy75]

If you have already syspreped then better you boot your pc in winpe and capture the install.wim.

If you don't want to do that I would suggest you to backup your C drive with Acronis True Image Home 2010. Later you can restore this image in the same computer or to a different computer using universal option.

[cluberti]

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.

The LTI wizard will look like it always does until you choose the sysprep and capture task you create. It'll change after that.

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).

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).

[Firebird78]

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.

The LTI wizard will look like it always does until you choose the sysprep and capture task you create. It'll change after that.

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).

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?

[cluberti]

If you open a cmd prompt from within the PE image (shift+f10) and run ipconfig, do you have a valid IP address? Also, can you ping the IP of the WDS server?

This step isn't necessary (you'll still have a copy on the second partition on your machine), but it is good to get working.

[Firebird78]

If you open a cmd prompt from within the PE image (shift+f10) and run ipconfig, do you have a valid IP address? Also, can you ping the IP of the WDS server?

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?

[cluberti]

This is one of the many reasons why Task Sequences in MDT do sysprep and capture .

[Firebird78]

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.

[cluberti]

It's probably unable to find sysprep itself (the error is a generic E_FAIL error code). Are you running this from a UNC share, or an actual mapped drive? Also, make sure you're running cscript litetouch.wsf, and not the litetouch.vbs file.

[Firebird78]

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...)

[cluberti]

You're supposed to run that in the base image, not a WinPE (it won't find sysprep in WinPE, because WinPE doesn't have sysprep!). If you've already sysprep'ed the image, your only options are save it locally with your capture image, or do over.

[Firebird78]

You're supposed to run that in the base image, not a WinPE (it won't find sysprep in WinPE, because WinPE doesn't have sysprep!). If you've already sysprep'ed the image, your only options are save it locally with your capture image, or do over.

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." ?

[cluberti]

Base Image == the Windows image you've already sysprep'ed. It's called "sysprep and capture" for a reason, specifically you use it to run sysprep, generalize, and then capture. You've already done 1 and 2 of the 3 steps, so there's no need to even continue down that road. Second question, "do over" means remake your image in MDT, and make sure not to skip the sysprep and capture portion of the task sequence when making the new image.

Back to your original problem, you're going to need a second partition or hard disk to capture the WIM to for now, unless you can find network drivers you can add to the capture image in WDS to make it work. What network hardware are we talking about here that isn't working? Win7 WIMs have tons of drivers, so it'd be interesting to know what network hardware isn't working under it.