Chatham

Actually I have the same problem. I copied the key from the bootable disk. I installed UltraVNC with plugins for DSM and I am still not able to connect. Would you mind posting a step-by-step instructions how to get it done? I have followed your instructions above, but they didn't work for me.

Is there any plan to include the mentioned above feature? It would extremely decrease the number of boot images for our organization, as we target a few builds for teams/machines types just by a few changes to the post-deployment tasks specified in the XML answer file.

Actually the issue was with the hard drive itself. It's broken and even BIOS won't detect it.

I created a new boot disk with only that platform pack. The issue occurs in one of my remote offices and there is a 8 hour difference between us so it makes it a little tricky. I'll try and fix that and let you know.

Combined one. I created a universal PP with all our architectures. Should I create a separate one just for the Elitebook?

Hi, What would be the cause when Deploy Wizard spits out an error at Disk Options that say: The image data is too large for the target drive. Obviously the hard drive is not too small. The image is not even 10GB and hard drive is 128GB. This is what happens if I choose the option Recreate drives. If however I choose Wipe and load drives option it throws error: The taget computer does not contain a corresponding partition. I am pretty puzzled here. Any idea what might be causing this? How can I get it to work? The computer I am trying to image is HP EliteBook 2530p. Thanks

I use VirtualBox and didn't have issues whatsoever. However, some of the changes you are referring to might be connected with the fact that after applying the platformpack and re-installation of drivers for the new architecture, some settings might get changed and you will have to use tasks to set them correctly. For example, when changing power settings on the VDI machine before capturing, you won't be able to set options for setting the computer to sleep. However when I deploy my image to a new machine, I want this setting to be set to never. In order to achieve that, I run a task with command "powercfg.exe -change -standby-timeout-ac 0" to set it. Also, you might need to check if sysprep is not changing some settings and overwriting the values upon deployment. I would recommend doing some post deployment configuration with scripts to make sure you have all things set.

This is worth mentioning though: CN should be used if the container name has been created by default when you installed AD (System Based container). For instance, the container Computers on the top level of your AD structure should be referred to as CN=Computers,DC=Domain,DC=Com. Whereas your containers that you created yourself, should be referred to as OU (Organizational Unit). You can always check what type of object it is by right clicking on it and selecting Properties -> Object tab. Check the Object Class to see if it's a Container or Organizational Unit. For instance OU=Computers,OU=OfficeEurope,DC=Domain,DC=Com. Containers have a plain icon when OUs have little books in the icon. Truthfully if I want new computers to go to the default Computers container, I just leave the field blank.

Try using OU instead of CN. It didn't work for me when I used CN. But when I specified the target location as OU=Computers,DC=MyCompany,DC=com it worked like a charm.

True, but when you log on as a local administrator (which I enabled as autologon for first 2 boots to install apps and configure a few things) I can check for updates. My question was whether or not SmartDeploy is planning to include this in your post configuration tasks. Like in a deploy wizard you can select if you want to install newest updates (and get to choose from like required updates, optional updates, definition updates etc). I can wrap up a script that will essentially do this for me and install them, but a built-in functionality of such would make the deployment process even better.

Hi, Would it be possible to run a windows update task when image is deployed? Either a built in functionality or a custom script? MS patches are released every month and defender definitions even more often. It'd be a good functionality to have your base image updated with latest patches and security updates. Thanks

No problem. I believe that would be a great benefit, cause I really can't imagine an enterprise where you dispatch let's say 10 engineers with a bootable DVD each to install system on several computers and then realize you need to make a change in the answer file and therefore rebuild ALL the DVDs :/ Of course this would not be the case if everyone had PXE boot, but since there are companies that don't, this would be a huge help.

Yeah it can. With SmartDeploy support help I managed to do it for me. Here are the steps you need to perform to make it work: 1. Create a vbs script and call it, for instance, autoadmin.vbs 2. The code is below: UpdateXML "T:\windows\panther\unattend.xml" UpdateXML "T:\windows\system32\sysprep\unattend.xml" Sub UpdateXML(xmlFile) Set xmlUnattendFile = CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0") xmlUnattendFile.Async = "False" blnLoaded = xmlUnattendFile.Load(xmlFile) If (blnLoaded) And (xmlUnattendFile.parseError.errorCode = 0) Then xmlUnattendFile.setProperty "SelectionNamespaces", "xmlns:ns='urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend'" Set objXmlNode = xmlUnattendFile.selectSingleNode("//ns:settings[@pass='oobeSystem']/ns:component[@name='Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup']") If Not (objXmlNode Is Nothing) Then 'create the AutoLogon node Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "AutoLogon", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) 'select it Set objXmlNode = xmlUnattendFile.selectSingleNode("//ns:component[@name='Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup']/ns:AutoLogon") 'create the Password node and elements Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "Password", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) Set objXmlNode = xmlUnattendFile.selectSingleNode("//ns:AutoLogon/ns:Password") Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "Value", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") 'put your admins password below objXmlElement.Text = "PASSWORD_GOES_HERE" objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "PlainText", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") objXmlElement.Text = "True" objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) 'select the AutoLogon node and create elements Set objXmlNode = xmlUnattendFile.selectSingleNode("//ns:component[@name='Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup']/ns:AutoLogon") Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "Enabled", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") objXmlElement.Text = "true" objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "LogonCount", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") 'below put the number of how many times the account should log in automatically objXmlElement.Text = "1" objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) Set objXmlElement = xmlUnattendFile.createNode(1, "Username", "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend") 'put the account name in you want to autologon objXmlElement.Text = "Administrator" objXmlNode.appendChild(objXmlElement) 'save it xmlUnattendFile.Save(xmlFile) End If End If End Sub Make sure you set your admins password, logon count (how many times you want your admin acc to log on after consecutive logons and reboots) and the actual account name, which is administrator in the code but you can put another account if you have any. 3. When using Media Wizard, on the screen where you can select a folder with more files to attach to the image, browse to the folder where you put the autoadmin.vbs script so it gets copied over to the image. IMPORTANT: If you are going to use the WDS deployment with PXE boot and your image will be a WIM image, not a ISO image, your files WILL NOT get copied over to the image (I hope admins will make sure they fix that so both ISO and WIM images are the same). In order to copy those files over to a WIM file, you will need to use IMAGEX.EXE program to mount, create folders and copy autoadmin.vbs script and commit changes to the WIM image. If you decide to go for that, let me know, I'll help you out. 4. Create a task in the deployment wizard and: - set it as POSTIMAGE (after the image has been deployed) - command line is: Wscript.exe X:\z\Scripts\autoadmin.vbs If you wish to modify an existing answer file, just add the below lines: <task> <phase>POSTIMAGE</phase> <command>Wscript.exe X:\z\scripts\autoadmin.vbs</command> </task> This worked for me. Hope it helps. Let me know if I can help you out more. Jakub

Hi guys, So i have been thinking about how the way you can install custom applications automatically with the image. The way I am doing it now is: - Enable autologon during the POSTIMAGE phase - When PC builds up, administrator is automatically logged on - I have a bunch of applications set to install during the FIRSTLOGON stage The way I am doing it this way is because we have 3 Desktop teams, each with its own set of apps and custom configurations to apply upon build. Basically I map the network drive during FIRSTLOGON stage as a task and then next tasks simply use the path to run msiexec with /qn or simply silently installing all other software and powershell scripts. The problem is - this requires a custom XML file to have all the lines for tasks etc. Once something changes on the network drive or I need to add or remove an applications - I have to completely rebuild the boot image. As for our office in US it's cool cause we use PXE boot so I can just use WDS and replace the image. But for the offices in Europe where we don't have PXE, that would mean every small change would require building a new USB Stick or burning a new DVD/CD with bootable image. Question - would it be possible to boot winPE and THEN be able to select a custom SmartDeploy.xml file as an answer file? The current Deployment Wizard only allows to export the file, not ti actually IMPORT an existing one. The way I see it - create an additional window in the deployment wizard so you can browse the network for a correct answer file. This would give flexibility to changes made to them and enable me to save the planet and DVDs Hope you could take this under consideration! Jakub

Hey SmartDeploy world! Really excited to be here. I am 5 days in my trial version and managed to capture and deploy custom image of Windows 7. However, I want to make it as automated as possible so I have a few questions. 1. Once the image has been deployed and added to the domain, I want to install applications in silent mode. The apps are located on a network location and therefore I need to map a network drive.The way I have been doing this so far is: use tasks at level FIRSTLOGON to map the drive using NET USE command run msiexec or exe files in silent mode and install stuff - again in FIRSTLOGON run last command shutdown /r /t 90 to reboot the PC after all has been done and make the PC ready for the user to log on It all works fine. The only problem is - I want it automated. I would like Windows to log on automatically as Administrator so tasks at FIRSTLOGON could kick off. This would need to happen only once, so tasks could start and then after the last reboot, it would stay at ctrl+alt+del for the user to log on. I have received a VBS script to do that and add autologon option. I also have been told to run it as POSTIMAGE level. How do I do that? Where do i place the autoadmin.vbs file and how to I then find that file in the tasks? 2. I use ImageX from windows AIK to modify the SmartDeploy.xml file and then commit changes upon unmounting. Any precautions here to make? I made a bootable media for WDS (image.wim) cause I boot it via PXE boot and want to know if imagex is safe to modify these images 3. What would you say are the best practices for running tasks? Like for installing apps, for modifying registry, for removing files? When I used MDT I created a bunch of powershell scripts that did most of my post configuration tasks and would like to retain that in SmartDeploy. Where should I run them to make it safe and possible? Appreciate your help! Jakub