Why the need to capture ?

[midiboy]

Hi guys,

I have spent the last 2 days reading through most of the BDD and WAIK documentation, viewing webcasts by Microsoft etc.

But I don´t get it ...

In almost all the step by step documentations available Microsoft recommends to build a deployment base, then installing a reference computer using Windows PE and later on capturing that image using Windows PE and ImageX again. Then, this reference image should be syspreped and deployed to all the computers.

To me this sounds like a completely redundant step.

Vista already comes as a wim image on the Microsoft DVDs. Why not simply build an answer file, inject this file in the root of the boot.wim file and start deployment of the original install.wim by MS ?

Why is this nowhere documented ? (At least I haven´t found any guide that describes depoyment in such a way).

BDD 2007 RC1 also seems to only support the capturing way of doing this although it seems redundant.

I would like to skip capturing but I am having trouble creating a working installdvd using the original wim files. Any guides around for this somewhere ?

Thanks for your help,

Alex

[midiboy]

Hi again,

I just found a simple guide to do what I want but it´s in German:

Integrate autounattend.xml into DVD - German

I will try that now.

No need to inject the xml into the wim obviously, which makes me wonder why Microsoft recommends to capture images even more. Whats the benefit ?

Bye,

Alex

[FireGeier]

Hello midiboy!

There is no need to capture an image of your installation. You can do the whole installation from DVD unattended without capturing the image.

However it's usefull to have the image capturing for professionell environments, cause deploying the captured image is faster than doing the whole installation unattended again and again.

If you're doing the unattended installation for single computers only or for samll offices than there is realy no need to use the capture method IMO.

Martin

[Br4tt3]

A true .wim image is by definition sysprep:ed... so when creating your "template" computer, by for example running an unattended setup installation of vista, before deploying that reference configuration you need to make it generic, in other words sysprep it and then capture it to the .wim format again before deploying it onto 1000's of clients..... also pretty interessting that MS delievers a sysprep:ed image to customers with the vista dvd, otherwise, it would not be usable from lets say WDS. We as customers, then can install a referece machine and sysprep again. With XP and it was only support one machine once, before redoing the whole thing again and again which was pretty annoying... now u could it 100 of times without performing a full wipe of the reference machine.