I have created this blog to record the things I learn as I progress in my studies of the Windows Operating System. My focus will primarily be the latest Operating System offerings by Microsoft, but much of the content below may also apply to earlier versions. I invite you to join me as I explore and learn about Microsoft Windows!
In this final installment of the series, I show how to install a new Windows 7 workstation using the tools and components we've put in place. This final piece leverages our custom .wim file, which we install from the network share where it was placed in the previous video, to build a fully-functioning Windows 7 environment.
The tools we use in this video are:
BCDBOOT - Used to set up a system partition on a computer, or to repair the boot environment within the system partition of a computer. BCDBoot can be run from Windows PE
DISKPART - A Command-line tool that enables disk configuration and management from within a Windows PE environment
IMAGEX - A command-line tool used to capture, modify, and rapidly deploy file-based disk images.
In Part 4 of this series, I will show you how to create a .iso image which will allow you to create bootable media for when you are doing your automated installs.
The specific terms and tools referenced in this video are:
WINDOWS PE - "Windows Pre-Installation Environment". This is a lightweight version of Windows 7 (and also other versions of Windows going back to XP) used to allow the deployment of workstations or servers.
WINPE.WIM - This is the base (non-modified) Windows PE image
BOOT.WIM - This contains a bootable version of Windows PE
IMAGEX.EXE - This is an imaging tool used to create, modify and deploy images to workstations and servers. It support the Microsoft Windows Imaging (.wim) format
ETFSBOOT.COM - This is the El Torito Boot Sector File used to allow your .ISO image to boot the device where your image will be installed. (NOTE: The El Torito specification allows a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM to function as either a hard drive or a floppy drive from the perspective of the machine)
OSCDIMG - This is a command-line tool used to create an image file (.iso) of a customized version of Windows PE
COPYPE.CMD - This is a script used to create the WinPE directory structure and copies all of the necessary files for the architecture you've selected (x86, amd64, or ia64)
In Part 3 of this series, I'll show you how to take the answer file that we previously created and use it to create a Windows 7 reference machine. This machine will become be base build from which end user machines will be built.
In this video, the following topics are addressed:
Tips and tricks for doing an unattended installation on a Hyper-V virtual machine including:
How to create a virtual device to become the reference machine
How to build a virtual floppy disk (.VFD)
How to use the .VFD to copy the answer file so that it can be used when installing the reference machine
How to verify that your answer file settings were implemented during the unattended install
How to sysprep your reference machine and get it ready to be imaged for use with end users.
Future installations of this series will address how to create bootable WindowsPE media, as well as how to install over the network.
In the second part of this series, you'll see the pieces necessary to build an answer file that will be used to do an automated install of the Windows 7 Client. The steps in this video include:
Install.wim overview
Windows System Image Manager overview
How to create a Catalog File for Windows 7 Enterprise
How to create, validate and save an Answer File
Understanding Configuration Passes
As a reference, the following information describes the Configuration Passes a system will go through during automated installation:
windowsPE (runs when booting the Windows setup media or when starting Windows Setup from a previous installation)
Windows image is copied to the destination computer
Adds any boot-critical drivers
offlineServicing (runs automatically after the windowsPE pass)
applies updates, drivers and language packs
the Windows image is applied to a hard drive and any settings in this section are also applied to the image
specialize (runs automatically when the Windows image boots for the 1st time, or after sysprep /generalize has been run)
configures information specific to the hardware of the destination machine
creates unique SIDs
optionally: network settings, domain information, etc. can be set on this pass
generalize (runs if Microsoft-Windows-Deployment|Generalize is configured, or when sysprep /generalize has been run)
removes any specific configuration information from the current install
allows the installed image to be captured and reapplied to different computers
auditSystem (runs if Microsoft-Windows-Deployment|Reseal|Mode=Audit is configured or if sysprep /audit has been run)
used for additional configurations, such as device drivers
auditUser (runs if Microsoft-Windows-Deployment|Reseal|Mode=Audit is configured or if sysprep /audit has been run)
- used to run custom commands or Windows Shell options
oobeSystem (runs if Microsoft-Windows-Deployment|Reseal|Mode=OOBE is configured or if sysprep /OOBE has been run)
settings applied before the Welcome screen appears
used to configure Windows Shell options, create user accounts, and specify language/locale settings
In Part 3, we'll look at how the answer file we've just created can be used to automatically install Windows 7.
In this series of posts, I'll be demonstrating how to automatically deploy a Windows 7 Enterprise client using Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). This first part shows how to install WAIK. A couple of important points to note before you begin:
It will be necessary to download WAIK before you can install it. Because Microsoft updates this tool from time to time, the best way to find the download is to go to www.microsoft.com/downloads and search for it.
When deciding where you will install WAIK, you will want to pick a machine that can be used to build images, make changes, etc. It is not recommended that you use a production server, or even your own personal PC. Instead, pick a device you don't mind making lots of changes to.
If you've worked with Windows for very long, you've had an issue where you couldn't connect to another device over the network. This typically results in the need to run numerous tools to find out what's wrong. Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft has provided a really nice automated method to diagnose what's wrong. The video below explains the Network Diagnostics Framework and shows how it can be useful to you as you begin troubleshooting network connectivity issues.
As a first step, I wanted to verify the version of Windows running in my Hyper-V environment. It's been awhile since I installed it and I couldn't remember whether or not it was Windows 2008 R2. I decided to capture a very short video showing how to determine this with the command-line tool known as WINVER.
Pretty simple, and yet important if someone doesn't know the version of Windows they're running. I hope this helps.
