Capturing the Installation onto a Network Share

Capturing the Installation onto a Network Share

You can capture an image of your reference computer by using Windows PE and the ImageX tool. Then you store that image on a network share. Alternatively, on a computer running Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate edition, you can store the image on a VHD and make that VHD bootable, as described in the practice in Lesson 2, later in this chapter.

To capture the installation image you have created on your reference computer to a network share, perform the following procedure:

1. Insert your Windows PE media into your reference computer and restart the computer. As before, you may have to override the boot order to boot from the CD/DVD-ROM drive. If so, select the appropriate function key to override the boot order during initial boot.
2. Windows PE starts and opens a command-prompt window. Use the ImageX tool located on your Windows PE media to capture an image of your reference computer installation. For example, if your optical drive is drive E:, your installation is on drive C:, and you want to capture the image on drive D:, you would enter:

   
   e:\imagex.exe /capture C: d:\installationimage.wim "my Win7 Install" /compress
   fast /verify
   

3. Copy the image to a network location. For example, enter:

   
   net use y: \\network_share\images
   copy d:\myimage.wim y:
   

4. If necessary, provide network credentials for appropriate network access. Your image is now on volume Y:.

Deploying from a Network Share

After you have imaged your reference installation, you can deploy the image onto new hardware (one or more destination computers). This section describes how you would do this manually. Chapter 3 discusses MDT 2010 and the automatic installation of multiple client computers.

To deploy an image from a network share, you use the Diskpart tool to format the hard drive of a destination computer. Then you copy the image from the network share. Perform the following procedure:

1. On your destination computer, insert your Windows PE media and restart the computer by pressing the CTRL+ALT+DEL keys. Windows PE opens a command-prompt window.
2. Format the hard drive to reflect the disk configuration requirements by using the Diskpart tool from the Windows PE command-prompt window. To do this, open an elevated command prompt.
3. Enter diskpart.
4. Enter select disk 0.
5. Enter clean.
6. Enter create partition primary size=100.
7. Enter select partition 1.
8. Enter format fs=ntfs label="system".
9. Enter assign letter=c.
10. Enter active.

    Note

    SYSTEM PARTITION Steps 6 through 9 create a 100-MB system partition. This is not strictly necessary because the Windows 7 installation routine creates a system partition automatically on installation if one has not been created already. However, Microsoft recommends creating this partition before installation.

11. Enter create partition primary.
12. Enter select partition 2.
13. Enter format fs=ntfs label="Windows".
14. Enter assign letter=d.
15. Enter exit.

    Note

    CREATING A SCRIPT You can create a script with this information in a text file and store in the same location as your image. To run the script from a Windows PE command-prompt window, enter diskpart /s <scriptname>.txt, where <scriptname> is the name of the text file that includes the Diskpart commands. Figure 2-8 shows a typical script file named DiskConfigurationFormat.txt. Figure 2-8: A disk configuration format file

16. Copy the image from the network share to your local hard drive. For example, at an elevated command prompt, type:

    
    net use y: \\network_share\images
    copy y:\installationimage.wim d:
    

17. If necessary, provide network credentials for appropriate access.
18. Apply the image to the hard drive by using the ImageX tool located on the Windows PE media. For example, at an elevated command prompt, enter:

    
    e:\imagex.exe /apply d:\myimage.wim 1 C:
    

19. Use BCDboot to initialize the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store and copy boot environment files to the system partition. For example, at a command prompt, type:

    
    d:\windows\system32\bcdboot d:\windows