Windows 7 Deployment FOG- SAD2 Driver tool
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This topic is still a bit hard to understand when i used SAD 2 for more than a year and now SAD 3 !
I added to SAD a FOG configuration generator based on network IP and DNS suffix and a Windows OEM Activator based on brands but it’s far from perfection so i don’t use them anymore.
But if some people are interested to improve my script, i can share them.To use SAD 2 or 3 in silent, you have to add the /S to the .cmd of SAD and run something like this in the “FirstLogonCommands” of the sysprep :
C:\SAD3-130627\DP_Install_Tool.cmd /SThere is no problem to keep this kind of image under VMware Workstation 10 even after making with an older version.
Mine was made in 2013 and i keep updating it since. -
[quote=“jmeyer, post: 32276, member: 6537”]
There is no problem to build this image under VMware Workstation 10.
Mine was made in 2013 and i keep updating it since.[/quote]Thanks for confirming this.
I’m thinking this could be a problem with my configuration of VMWare Workstation configuration or the hardware/OS it is running on. I would question the settings I’m using when creating the VM guest images but older snapshots work fine on VMs created in November 2013 or before. I tried starting from scratch with a fresh install of Workstation 9 and still end up with unbootable deployments. The file system transfers fine and partitioning looks good but still won’t boot.
Are there any recent Windows updates known to break VMWare V2P? My workstation 10 is Windows 8 x64(not 8.1) on an HP 6200 Pro while Workstation 9 is Windows 7 x64 on an HP 6000 Pro. P2V is well documented but the reverse not so much.
We are an HP shop with 6000/6200/6300 pro and will be adding 600 G1 shortly. Aside from the 6000 not wanting to step through the boot order when a PXE server is not found these machines have worked well for us until now.
I’m quickly running out of ideas so any thoughts are welcome. Reports of success with similar hardware will also help me feel more hopeful.
Thanks
Eli
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There were something about disabling SCSI (scsi0.present = “FALSE”) and put drive as IDE but i haven’t edit vmx file under Workstation 10 for a new image version so i’m not sure it’s something to check.
I don’t understand what you try to do when you speak of P2V for HP home computers.
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I do set the drives as IDE but I have not edited the VMX file to disable SCSI. It is a good thought that I will try to tomorrow and report results.
P2V is shorthand for the process of capturing a physical machine to a virtual machine. This is not what I’m trying to do but my point was there is plenty of documentation of that process. V2P is essentially what we are doing when we are preparing virtual machine images with VMWare Workstation for deployment to physical machine with FOG.
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think there must be a fault with my machine as the vm now and again will bluescreen with reference pointer error. but I continued but when it came to the vm restarting after sysprep it gets to starting services and hangs and gets a error and keeps going round ina cycle same if I then deploy the uploaded image to a machine.
I tested the driver install tool on a baremetal fresh install of windows 7 x64 and it installed every driver fine, I then syspreped it with my unattend file and that goes through fine (doesn’t activate but think that’s a key issue).
am guessing if I need to this process can be done on a baremetal machine I just loose the ablity of snapshotting.
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[quote=“Eli Kelly, post: 32305, member: 1152”]I do set the drives as IDE but I have not edited the VMX file to disable SCSI. It is a good thought that I will try to tomorrow and report results.
P2V is shorthand for the process of capturing a physical machine to a virtual machine. This is not what I’m trying to do but my point was there is plenty of documentation of that process. V2P is essentially what we are doing when we are preparing virtual machine images with VMWare Workstation for deployment to physical machine with FOG.[/quote]
Why you don’t build a clean Windows in a VM and use snapshot to revert modification if needed then use SAD in sysprep ? This way, if you have special soft to add to an image, just install them, run sysprep, upload image then revert modification to the VM.
We have HP, DELL, LENOVO, ACER and few other brand of computer and we use ONLY ONE image with sysprep…
Using an image from a computer means that you backup all the specification of the computer for nothing (driver and software).
Maybe you don’t even handle temp files… -
I have another query.
The company I work for manufactures pcs. All the machines were am trying to implement this are my work branded machines, they are licenced with a oem os which activates against the bios.
I have one of the oem 32 bit disks but not the 64 am getting hold of one. But what would I need to change in my sysprep file as I won’t need a key in there as the oem os activates against the bios.
I don’t know of any of that makes sense but if you understand please let me know.
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Change the architecture from amd64 to x86
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Oh yea I’ve done that. I mean do I just leave the section in the unattend file for the product key blank as this ets activated against the bios.
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Remove the <ProductKey>XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX</ProductKey> in it’s entirety.
I also believe you need to set the -SPP parts to -SLC
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[quote=“jmeyer, post: 32396, member: 6537”]Why you don’t build a clean Windows in a VM and use snapshot to revert modification if needed then use SAD in sysprep ? This way, if you have special soft to add to an image, just install them, run sysprep, upload image then revert modification to the VM.
We have HP, DELL, LENOVO, ACER and few other brand of computer and we use ONLY ONE image with sysprep…
Using an image from a computer means that you backup all the specification of the computer for nothing (driver and software).
Maybe you don’t even handle temp files…[/quote]That is exactly what I am doing and it has been working beautifully until recently. I have a full set of snapshots from every stage of preparing my clean image. From time to time I like to patch the OS, take a new snapshot and then update the stock image on the FOG server. For some reason any new snapshots break this process.
I did try your thought about setting scsi0.present = “FALSE” in the VXD (edited:meant VMX) file. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to make a difference.
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[quote=“Eli Kelly, post: 32474, member: 1152”]That is exactly what I am doing and it has been working beautifully until recently. I have a full set of snapshots from every stage of preparing my clean image. From time to time I like to patch the OS, take a new snapshot and then update the stock image on the FOG server. For some reason any new snapshots break this process.
I did try your thought about setting scsi0.present = “FALSE” in the VXD (edited:meant VMX) file. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to make a difference.[/quote]
Maybe make a new Windows installation will solve the problem…
I join my .vmx content to compare with yours in case something in it bring the problem.[CODE].encoding = “windows-1252”
config.version = “8”
virtualHW.version = “9”
scsi0.present = “TRUE”
scsi0.virtualDev = “lsisas1068”
memsize = “1024”
mem.hotadd = “TRUE”
ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.fileName = “Windows 7 x64 2-000001.vmdk”
ide1:0.present = “TRUE”
ide1:0.autodetect = “TRUE”
ide1:0.deviceType = “cdrom-raw”
ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000”
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet0.addressType = “generated”
usb.present = “TRUE”
ehci.present = “TRUE”
ehci.pciSlotNumber = “35”
sound.present = “TRUE”
sound.virtualDev = “hdaudio”
sound.fileName = “-1”
sound.autodetect = “TRUE”
mks.enable3d = “TRUE”
pciBridge0.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge4.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge4.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge4.functions = “8”
pciBridge5.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge5.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge5.functions = “8”
pciBridge6.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge6.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge6.functions = “8”
pciBridge7.present = “TRUE”
pciBridge7.virtualDev = “pcieRootPort”
pciBridge7.functions = “8”
vmci0.present = “TRUE”
hpet0.present = “TRUE”
usb.vbluetooth.startConnected = “TRUE”
displayName = “Windows 7 x64 2”
guestOS = “windows7-64”
nvram = “Windows 7 x64 2.nvram”
virtualHW.productCompatibility = “hosted”
powerType.powerOff = “hard”
powerType.powerOn = “hard”
powerType.suspend = “hard”
powerType.reset = “hard”
extendedConfigFile = “Windows 7 x64 2.vmxf”
scsi0.pciSlotNumber = “160”
ethernet0.generatedAddress = “00:0c:29:ef:45:1b”
ethernet0.pciSlotNumber = “33”
usb.pciSlotNumber = “32”
sound.pciSlotNumber = “34”
vmci0.id = “1492075803”
vmci0.pciSlotNumber = “36”
uuid.location = “56 4d 18 a6 8c f9 61 ab-c7 34 18 d6 58 ef 45 1b”
uuid.bios = “56 4d 18 a6 8c f9 61 ab-c7 34 18 d6 58 ef 45 1b”
cleanShutdown = “TRUE”
replay.supported = “FALSE”
replay.filename = “”
ide0:0.redo = “”
pciBridge0.pciSlotNumber = “17”
pciBridge4.pciSlotNumber = “21”
pciBridge5.pciSlotNumber = “22”
pciBridge6.pciSlotNumber = “23”
pciBridge7.pciSlotNumber = “24”
scsi0.sasWWID = “50 05 05 66 8c f9 61 a0”
usb:1.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = “0”
vmotion.checkpointFBSize = “134217728”
softPowerOff = “FALSE”
usb:1.speed = “2”
usb:1.deviceType = “hub”
usb:1.port = “1”
usb:1.parent = “-1”
checkpoint.vmState.readOnly = “FALSE”
checkpoint.vmState = “”
tools.remindInstall = “TRUE”
numvcpus = “2”
cpuid.coresPerSocket = “2”
floppy0.present = “FALSE”
usb:0.present = “TRUE”
usb:0.deviceType = “hid”
usb:0.port = “0”
usb:0.parent = “-1”
[/CODE] -
Thanks!
Your vmx file is substantially similar to my working ones with the exception that mine have:
[CODE]virtualHW.version = “8”[/CODE]
An interesting observation is that all of my newer snapshots that are not working have an added line at the bottom of the vmx file
[CODE]monitor.phys_bits_used = “40”[/CODE] I’m not sure if that is significant at all but it is my best lead right now.
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If i remember well, you have an endless loading problem after reboot, right ?
Is it reboot on the VM or on an other computer ? -
That’s right. It happens on deployment to a physical machine.
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At first boot and before Windows make it self optimization ?
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Yes at first boot and before self optimization. Just after “Starting Windows” is displayed just as the logo is starting to show up the computer reboots.
If I try to boot to safe mode it restarts right after Loading CLASSPNP.SYS
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Have you reboot your VM before and after sysprep to see if this happen ?
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Hi wondering if anyone can offer any advice, so all the machines at work we plan to use are all RM branded and have oem licences, i have now got hold of the RM windows 7 64bit oem recovery disk (activates against bios), do i have to do anything special to make a golden image with this or would i be best making a single image for each RM Machine type, in total about 5 different models.
ive tested the sad2 tool on them and it works fine gets every driver no problem apart from the RM laptops which is a issue we have seen before with a faulty intel onboard graphic driver which basically kills the display and you have to RDP to the machine and update the driver for the graphic manually in device manager by searching automatically for the driver and it will grab the correct one from the internet, am not sure how i would update this manually in the driver packs either.
any advice would be great.
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[quote=“jmeyer, post: 32641, member: 6537”]Have you reboot your VM before and after sysprep to see if this happen ?[/quote]
VM reboot after sysprep completes normally.
Update: Gave up on VMWare for this. I switched to VirtualBox and the process is working perfectly except that I get prompts for a hostname when windows starts up after deploying to a physical machine. Actually it initially prompted for the hostname and timezone. My unattend (which works correctly with my old VMWare snapshots as well as with MDT deployments) originally declared the Timezone and ComputerName in the specialize pass. Adding a Timezone value in the OOBE pass fixed the prompt for time zone but adding the ComputerName tag there doesn’t make a difference. I have tried leaving the ComputerName tag out of both sections and not surprisingly the hostname prompt still appears when the physical machine boots after deployment.
Admittedly my unattend file is somewhat complex as it does a few things such as configure RDP, enable Administrator, disable WER. Tomorrow I will try a very basic unattend file but thought I would see if any ideas came up that would save me the troubleshooting time.
Thanks
Eli
