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Making the perfect sysprep Windows 7 image

riahc3

riahc3

Senior member
Im gonna go ahead and make a sysprep Windows 7 image but I want to think and plan the best way to do it.

Ill activate them after I deploy them. Ill problably activate ALL software installed on them after I deploy them

They will have Office, a PDF reader and that's it.

How should I handle users and PC names? This is for a domain so on that note, how do I automatically make them join a domain?

Those questions are really the ones that gets my clock ticking.
 
from all of your previous threads, i am starting to wonder just how much you know really, or at least promised to know to your superiors.
 
You create an answer file with all the info you need. That is then used with sysprep.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-aik-create-an-answer-file.aspx

You should ask your boss to send you to a course on Windows administration. This really is stuff you should already know. So if you are being asked to setup sysprep machines, exchange and god knows what else then I'd say you're in a strong position to get training.
 
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riahc3 said:
Im gonna go ahead and make a sysprep Windows 7 image but I want to think and plan the best way to do it.

Ill activate them after I deploy them. Ill problably activate ALL software installed on them after I deploy them

They will have Office, a PDF reader and that's it.

How should I handle users and PC names? This is for a domain so on that note, how do I automatically make them join a domain?

Those questions are really the ones that gets my clock ticking.
Click to expand...

What are you going to use to capture and deploy the image?
 
her209 said:
What are you going to use to capture and deploy the image?
Click to expand...
Clonezilla Server. Used it to make sysprepped images before and it makes perfect copies.


To the rest: What the is your problem? I know how to make a sysprep system, image it (personally I use Clonezilla but I know Microsoft and others have their own tools) and deploy it. This thread is about tips on what to do and what not to do.

One of my main questions is how to handle users, PC names and domain joinage. None of your have been able to answer that and treat me like a linking me to Microsoft's sysprep resources. I know I should use a answer file but it would be much much quicker to link me to the part of the answer file that describes how exactly to handle domains.

If you want to help, that's awesome. If not, don't waste my (or your time for that matter) giving out a smartass answer.


Thank you her209 for asking me a perfectly valid question.
 
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Phynaz said:
With an attitude like that I wouldn't bother asking for help in this forum in the future.
Click to expand...
Im just fed up, Phynaz. I just asked a simple question and other people have been able to answer.

Look at the first reply in this thread:
from all of your previous threads, i am starting to wonder just how much you know really, or at least promised to know to your superiors.
Click to expand...
NOTHING at all about this thread at all and going completely offtopic.

If people are going to have a attitude with me, its only fair that I treat them the same way.

Patience has its limits.

Ive even added a sig to prevent the problem in the future! 🙂 Im sorry if using the "F" is "politically incorrect" but its trying to get a point across.
 
people have answered most of your questions on all of your threads, and yet you want to go ahead with your non-standard non-compliant methodologies either way. you contradict yourself already in your exchange thread.

if you are the "do it all" IT guy in that company, considering the sheer scale of everything you are trying to accomplish on your own with your limited personal knowledge base, then i am pretty sure your superiors are unaware of your skill level. if i were your superiors and knew of your limitations i would have gotten an outside source instead to handle most, if not all, of it. there are just too many risks to just "wing it". it is also rare to have one person handle everything in a company unless they are of a certain skill level. now if you were a consultant hired to take care of everything, that actually makes more sense to me, and would explain a lot of your answers to people in this forum.

you say you "know how to sysprep/image/deploy" your windows 7 image. you also don't use an answer file, want to deploy with a clonezilla image, and don't want to bother looking through the resources people have linked to you to do it properly, and instead demand them to directly tell you what and where everything is? how about you do some leg work and patiently look over those links instead of wasting our time instead to specifically find it for you? i'll give you a tip to be nice. your bsod thread indicating vidsflt.sys as a possible cause. the file is related to Acronis's Virtual Disk Storage Filter driver, which has issues with USB devices. if you are sysprepping windows 7 with any emulation drivers installed then it has a chance of failing. depending on your version of windows 7 you could also just run a repair install and be done with it.
 
riahc3 said:
I know I should use a answer file but it would be much much quicker to link me to the part of the answer file that describes how exactly to handle domains.

If you want to help, that's awesome. If not, don't waste my (or your time for that matter) giving out a smartass answer.


Thank you her209 for asking me a perfectly valid question.
Click to expand...
I gave you a link to a video that shows you how to get started creating an answer file. What exactly do you want? From the "Get started" video you can then Google the parts you need to know or need more information on.

People give you links to info that will help and you get frustrated because you have to actually spend time reading them to get the job done.

Just so you know, everyone else here reads all the links people have posted in here. That's why they know how to do the tasks you're asking about. In every thread you just seems to want to get a one-liner back saying exactly how to do something. The fact of the matter is there is no Next Next Next finish installer for any of the stuff you want to do.
 
Clonezilla it is Not features loaed, less reliable, and Very slow as compare to the few sub $100 Apps.

It is free so it can help a "Poor" end user that once in a Blue Moon needs Disk Imaging.

Unless One is a ""Masochist""😉 I do not see any good reason to use in a Pro environment.




😎
 
Just used Clonezilla to restore a single full image backup of a dual boot Win7 / Centos 6.4 system - each had their own disk
and with compression the backup was 1/2 the size of the original 2 disks

worked perfect 🙂

If your pro environment concerns a student lab of multiple machines to restore back to initial state after class
you can't beat a Clonezilla Server for speed or the price - Free (GPL) Software
http://clonezilla.org/

especially cool feature:
By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed

or checkout FOG for mainly Windows backups
http://fogproject.org/

as far as differential/incremental backups after initial images - well that is another story
 
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"handle users, PC names and domain joinage"

If you are a single person in charge of this I assume the scale is not large. In that case just change the PC name after you boot the image, join it to the domain and add the AD user to the local admins group if that's how you roll. IMHO not worth automating for doing a deploy here and there...
 
I've always used WDS, a nice unattended answer file, and a few group policies to handle everything I've ever needed in a small to medium sized environment. In large environments I just add in System Center.
 
JackMDS said:
Clonezilla it is Not features loaed, less reliable, and Very slow as compare to the few sub $100 Apps.

It is free so it can help a "Poor" end user that once in a Blue Moon needs Disk Imaging.

Unless One is a ""Masochist""😉 I do not see any good reason to use in a Pro environment.
😎
Click to expand...
Slow? I imaged a new Dell PC to a NAS just a moment ago in about 3 minutes. You think it can be done faster from one PC to a NAS in less than 3 minutes?

Ive used, for example, Acronis some time back and just starting up and preparing the image is slow. With Clonezilla you just set where you want to put it and it starts doing its thing
 
Sector based imaging is fine for a few systems, or for organizations with a unified hardware platform (every system the same make and model). In these scenarios you would configure your system, in some cases you would want to configure the system in Audit Mode, create an answer file and then Sysprep and capture the sector based image, copy it to the destination systems of identical make and model, and repeat for each unique hardware platform.

Since it can be difficult or impossible to maintain identical hardware across the organization, and most organizations have more than a few systems, the right way to tackle Windows deployment is with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) which is free, developed by Microsoft, and developed specifically to tackle the complex nature of deployment in organizations of any size. With MDT you can create a central repository, called a deployment share, that houses customized images, application installation files, and drivers from which you can deploy images that contain your specific customizations, but which can result in various configurations of applications and be deployed to various makes and models of hardware.

If you have not yet seen it, I strongly recommend that you watch the Windows 8.1 Deployment Jump Start at the Microsoft Virtual Academy. The tools and topics discussed are applicable and relevant to anyone doing deployment of any Windows operating system. Some of the leading deployment experts sit in on the discussion and they really do a great job of delving into what the pain points are with deployment, and how they can be addressed.

If you are looking to try out MDT as a solution in your environment, a few tips that I would provide are:
· Remember that the Deployment Share is only a share and that Windows Server is not required unless you need WDS for network boot support. It is perfectly acceptable to install and work with MDT from a workstation, and it can easily be moved to a server if needed.
· Plan to have two Deployment Shares, one for the lab where you do not join a domain during deployment, and a second for production where you do join the corporate domain.
· Use a virtual machine for your reference machine. The virtual environment minimizes driver conflicts that might be caused by a physical reference machine’s drivers.
· Customize as much as you can using the automation of MDT. If you can avoid any applications or drivers in the base installation and apply all customizations using answer files, scripts, or Group Policy, you can deploy straight from the install.wim unaltered and never have to worry about updating an image again. Read more about the idea of a single image goal here.
· For operating systems earlier than Windows 8, be aware of rearm limitations and use SkipRearm in your lab environment to ensure that you do not get locked out of your image.
· Some security software implements protection that interferes with Sysprep, installing your security solution as an application rather than including it in the base image avoids Sysprep failures. If you absolutely must image with the security software installed, read up on the details of your security software and how it interacts with Sysprep. Some agents have Sysprep utilities or require self-protection to be disabled for Sysprep to function.
· Make use of the evaluation software available for IT Professionals on TechNet. Using the free evaluation software in your lab environment provides you with unlimited access to test and re-test until your deployment solution is ready for production. With Hyper-V Server, it can even provide you with the virtual environment on which to host your virtual lab.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet
 
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