EagleMitchell

23 minutes ago, SmartDeploySupport said:

Hi Mitchell,

I'm not quite sure I understand the issue - this behavior is by design, and if your intention is to burn the ISO files to disc, you can simply copy the ISO files to any workstation and use any disc-burning software to burn it to two dual-layer DVDs.

If your objective is to create a USB flash drive, you cannot use ISO files for this purpose. You would need to install SmartDeploy on another workstation, copy down the image and Platform Packs and (optionally) answer file to that workstation, and then run Media Wizard to create offline deployment media. If you select offline deployment media, then the image and Platform Packs are copied to the media. If you select boot media, then all the media gets is SmartPE + your answer file + any WindowsPE drivers that may be included in the Platform Packs you selected. So I suspect if the flash drive "was not getting everything needed", you may have selected boot media accidentally.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out at support@smartdeploy.com.

Glenn
SmartDeploy Support

Do you have a recommended burning software for burning the ISO's to a dual-layer dvd?  imgburn (A very popular Disk burning utility) does not support two iso files being burned to a single dual layer disk, and I am not aware of any other software that does as all any of the software's I am familiar with only allow you to select one of the two iso files and then when you select the second one it asks you to insert a fresh disk.  So if you could recommend one, that would be helpful.

As far as the USB Flash drive, I am selecting Offline media and have had a ticket open since Monday.

I don't find the email support very helpful as I am getting on average one response per day so it would probably be faster for me to take a photo, toss it in an envelope and mail it over since email support is not really that efficient.  I understand part of the reasoning for this is to push businesses to purchase a support contract, however  I am not super interested in paying for an advanced support contract as I am not convinced the software will even work, and I don't want to pay that much for something if I can't use it.  If I could prove to my boss that even one single image lands on a device like intended then he would green-light a full site license and a support contract, but until that time he will not spend anything further on this project.

Sorry for the frustration here, but I have wasted a week of time on trying to get this image to work, and at this time hand-loading each system has worked better than trying to image it, and it's a commonly used Lenovo Business Laptop.

When I use the Media Wizard and select a dual-layer DVD it creates two ISO files rather than just one.  The console has to stay on a server here so I don't have the ability to burn it to a disc because it is virtualized.  I was going to copy the iso to a workstation and then burn it using imgburn, however I noticed that the media wizard actually created two ISO's for the same image.  I have not been able to get this deployment to work at all and am curious if this is part of the problem.  I had originally pushed the media to a flash drive, however it appears that perhaps it was not getting everything needed?

Is it possible to use a 3rd party utility to burn the ISO to a disc from a workstation, or can I simply move the image to a workstation with Smart Deploy and burn the image from there even if it was not created there?

Thanks for the response Mike, I presume you just use the Advanced Settings when creating the Answer file and then use those options in there to accomplish that?

I just noticed that in Hyper-V you need to make the VM an Generation 1 VM.  If I use the Generation 1 VM do I need to deploy this as a Legacy BIOS system, or does Smart Deploy convert it to a UEFI image when it does the actual deployment to the systems since Hyper-V Gen 1 does not support UEFI images?