Brad H

i'll send an email over, thanks!

I'm trying to see if it's possible for me to create an image for computers that will be offline (won't need smart deploy client installed), and my bosses made a deal with the computer manufacturer to send them the image to apply at shipping for the 40+ computers. Down the road I'll hope to use SD to create bootable thumb drives to reimage the computers with updates, or changes, etc. So, I'm just trying to see if there's a possible way to create the WIM I can send them initially which would include the drivers and such already, as SD applies the drivers at deployment normally? It would be nice to make the initial image, and also have it available in SmartDeploy after all the computers are in use, if that makes sense. I'll have to make my own platform pack as well, since this specific model isn't available (not a big deal). But I suppose if I can't do this, I'll just have to make the image on the device itself and send it back to them. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks, ticket incoming.

Thanks for the reply. So, I'm not sure how to do this. I can post a picture of where it's stopping, and I don't see SmartDeploy's interface/setup window thing. It's stopped at the Login screen, my Administrator password that's set on the image doesn't work, the network icon has the X, and my options are to shut it down or reboot. Can you recommend a way to get to these files on the hard drive? only bootable thumb drive I have outside of the smartdeploy one we're testing, is my win10 barebones bootable.

I'm at a loss with this one, and I'll do my best to explain what we're seeing. We have HP Z240's (only happening with them specifically so far) SFF, that will appear to image either over PXE or with a USB bootable using SmartDeploy, but fails on first reboot and is stuck at the login screen with a big red X on the network icon in the corner (and our default Administrator password we configured on our image won't work either).. I've reconfigured the BIOS before imaging for UEFI. I thought maybe it had something to do with MBR vs GPT partition info, but the disks are set for GPT. This only seems to be happening on some of the original Z240's we got with Windows 7 on them from HP when they first came out (I believe the IT department asked for downgrades from Win10 back then). When we try to use SmartDeploy to put Windows 10 on them (fresh installs, not upgrades), they fail on the first reboot weirdness from above. However, if we swap the SSD (regular 2.5") with one from a newer Z240 or a new Z2 desktop, it images just fine. Has anybody experienced this? After much googling, I feel like there's some UEFI/AHCI SATA issue with the HP BIOS settings I'm missing, maybe? Because the SmartDeploy WinPE boots and starts the imaging process, and only fails at the reboot where the hard drive is now the boot drive. I can't tell if this is a BIOS issue or something I'm missing in SmartDeploy? We do set the checkbox for UEFI/Secure Boot. Here's the fun part, if I boot using my Windows 10 bootable USB I created with a Win10 ISO from microsoft, it boots, installs windows 10, reboots and let's me go through the set up properly and gets me to the desktop like normal, on the network and all that. Anybody seen this? What could it be? The IT manager has talked of just buying a bunch of new SSD's to replace these, but I'd like to avoid spending that money if it's not necessary. Thanks for any suggestions all.

Has there been any discussion over there to allow creation of an ISO (or whatever) that a technician can then just create a bootable SmartDeploy USB at their own desk? For centralized solutions with SmartDeploy, having to make a bootable thumb drive at the server itself (4 blocks away for me) isn't really practical.

I'm new here, so just needing to post a couple of things I'm not sure on. Regarding Platform Packs and updating them, is that something we can request to have them updated with latest drivers, or is it left up to the end Org to do the updating? I noticed on one of ours for an HP laptop, the pack is from 2018 and there's definitely newer updates. Any info would be great. Thanks!

Thanks Jeff, I saw your reply a few years ago saying the same thing, so I just wanted to check if anything has changed lately. We have SD and vmware workstation pro on a stand alone server and usually RDP to the server, then load the ref image in VMWare, but, as I said, it's just so dang slow to use. Thanks for the info!

I've found a few posts from over the years on whether to install vmware tools on a reference image (with workstation pro 15) when buildling the image or not (for deployment to a physical machine). I'm finding that without VMware tools, the Win10 reference image is really slow to deal with, difficult to navigate with a mouse, etc. So I'm curious, is it ok to install VMware tools and then uninstall them before shutting down to capture the image? Has it become better over the years of installing the Tools? Or any recommendations is very much appreciated! Brad