newbie: imaging

[hsikkema]

I am new to imaging and would like to copy a working machine with software installed onto 20 other machines with little or no intervention after the image has downloaded. My first attempts had me copying winload.efi onto the new drive and so I ran sysprep but then had to rebuild my user account. I’m not sure what to do with an answer file which is to be used with sysprep:

Here is the command I tried running before capturing the image

C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /unattend:%UserProfile%\Desktop\deploy.xml

but it does not succeed.

Any pointers on what I am not doing right? or how to proceed?
Thank you.

[george1421]

@hsikkema Well I have a comment and a suggestion for you.

1. The comment: When OOBE runs after the system has been cloned /unattend:%UserProfile%\Desktop\deploy.xml %UserProfile% will not be a known location. This location is relative to the user’s profile. During OOBE the WinSetup program runs as SYSTEM. There is no user profile directory for SYSTEM.
2. The suggestion: /unattend:%UserProfile%\Desktop\deploy.xml The normal thing to do is call this file unattend.xml and place it in the C:\Windows\Panther directory. While I’m not saying it won’t work, just WinSetup looks in C:\Windows\Panther directory first for a file called unattend.xml

I have never had to mess with winload.efi before. Also the sysprep process both before and after capture resets the computer system to a known state which removes a lot of things you might have customized. We either rely on the unattend.xml file to recreate things (like user accounts) or complete the setup of the system using a special batch file called setupcomplete.cmd This setupcomplete.cmd file runs just before the windows login box appears for the first time. So its a good place to adjust the system before the first user logs in. Also in the unattend.xml file you can configure windows to log in X number of times using the system admin account. Once logged in you can execute commands to configure the system as the current user.

When just starting out with imgaing you might want to look at some information on this site for tips for creating your golden (mother) image: https://www.deploymentresearch.com

[hsikkema]

@george1421 Thank you for the further details. I am currently trying your suggestion.

You wrote “Also the sysprep process both before and after capture resets…” Are you saying that I should NOT run sysprep at all once I have the system setup the way I wanted and instead use C:\Windows\Panther\unattend.xml ? How can I know what and where to put into unattend.xml?

[george1421]

@hsikkema said in newbie: imaging:

Are you saying that I should NOT run sysprep at all once I have the system setup

No you should run sysprep if you want to deploy one mother image to many target systems. What I’m saying is that sysprep and windows 10 work a bit differently then sysprep and win7. Where in windows 7 you could setup the system exactly like you wanted it and clone it to many systems. With win10 M$ says, <snark> they know better than you </snark>. Where OOBE will reset somethings that you setup during the creation of the golden image. So if you set the system one way in the golden image and then once deployed the values are reset blame it on Microsoft. To get around this system reset you can fix it again using the setupcomplete.cmd file (google it) and setting in the unattend.xml file. You need sysprep to reset the system guid and some other settings used by management programs. Also to prepare the system for deploying to different hardware platforms.

I say this with some hesitation because I understand the meanings, but if you have a golden image on a Dell 9410 and you will clone that image to other 9410s you really don’t “need” to sysprep the image. This is because all of the hardware drivers needed for the target system are already on the computer. But lets say you wanted to deploy that Dell 9410 image to a Lenovo thinkpad? In this case you MUST sysprep the system.

Imaging is a ballancing act between what microsoft things you need, plus settings in the unattend.xml file and then finally corrections you might need to make in the setupcomplete.cmd file or the firstrun commands in the unattend.xml file. Imaging Windows computers is a bit of a black art and this is all before you get FOG imaging in the picture.