Part 1 MDT setup
For this process we use MDT and the lite touch method to create our reference image. As I noted above, I’m not going to discuss any parts of setting MDT up for the lite touch. But I will say that it took me about 3 days to go from never touching MDT to capturing my first reference image with FOG. So its not that hard to learn. I do have to say that our reference image is built on a vSphere virtual machine. We used this method since the vm virtual machine doesn’t require any hardware specific drivers to make the system deploy. All of the MS native drivers work for this host system. Using a virtual machine is the recommended method when creating a clean reference (golden, mother) image or what ever you want to call it. You can create your reference image on real hardware no problem, but its a bit slower. Also using a virtual machine you can create snapshots of your reference system as you develop your golden image. It saves time having to rebuild the image for each tweak in the task sequence. In the beginning I was taking a vm snapshot prior to sysprepping as I was working on the unattend.xml file. It saved a bunch of time.
For Dell hardware this web site will save you a bunch of hunting around for model specific drivers. I recommend you bookmark it since you will use it a few times.
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/enterprise-client/w/wiki/2065.dell-command-deploy-driver-packs-for-enterprise-client-os-deployment
Back to MDT. From the website above you will want to download the WinPE 3.x driver cab.
I also recommend that you install winzip or 7-zip on your workstation since we will use one of those to extract the cab file. Its much faster to use 7-zip than the extract command on the cab files, believe me
What you want to do is install the Dell WinPE 3.x driver cab into MDT Out of Box Drivers section. This will install all of Dell boot time drivers so that your reference can boot on any Dell target hardware. This step is not specifically required for building a reference image on a VM. What it does do is preload Dell’s common drivers into your reference image build in case you don’t get your fog post install scripts just right during development your target computer will have at the minimum disk and network access. As I said this part may not be necessary. I loaded them from the beginning of developing the process and it worked. I never did try to remove them to see if the process broke. I found a path that worked reliably and stuck with it.
Now one of the keys to this universal image process is we need to tell our reference image where to look for drivers when new hardware is detected. So one of the last task sequences in the MDT build process updates the following registry key “HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DevicePath” to include a folder path of my choosing. In this example I’m going to place my target specific files in C:\Drivers. Originally I just appended C:\Drivers to the device path until I ran across trying to deploy to a Dell 780. The Optiplex 780 has a sound card that is supported by the native windows driver except for one specific thing. The native windows driver (found in the c:\windows\inf folder) doesn’t support the use of internal speaker. Everything else worked great as long as you connected an external speaker to the 780. But if you use the Dell sound driver the internal speaker worked as it should. So to avoid this type of issue I have windows search the c:\driver folder first then the c:\windows\inf folder. With all 15 models in my fleet, all of them work perfectly searching for drivers in this order.
So back to MDT, that task sequence uses the windows REG.EXE function to update the above mentioned key with this value. “C:\Drivers;%SystemRoot%\inf;” and we force that registry key to be set even if it previously exists. Note: for Win10 this registry key is no longer used. You will need to insert a section into your unattend.xml file that will instruct the installer do the same thing as this registry key
At the end of the MDT build process I have a batch file that runs the sysprep command with the required parameters. The sysprep command might look similar to this: sysprep.exe /quiet /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:C:\Windows\panther\Unattend.xml
So from there once sysprep process completes the virtual machine will shutdown. I then pxe boot the vm into fog and capture the image as you would normally.
You can do Part 1 without using MDT. You will just put windows into audit mode as you install it from DVD. You will have to manually update the registry and install the Dell WinPE 3.0 driver cab, but it is possible to get the results without MDT. We use MDT to automate this entire process so we get the same exact results every time we build the golden image. We go this route so we don’t have to deal with the reseal count or any of that mess. The other part I didn’t add above is that MDT will install all of the windows updates during the reference image build process. So our reference image will have all of the update at the time of image capture. Since its all automated from the image deployment, windows updates, and applications install you just start the build process and walk away. When you come back the image will be ready for sysprep and image capture.
