Comments for cluberti.com

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by cluberti

cluberti — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:43:58 +0000

Yes, this will wipe a disk by default based on the task sequence. What I would suggest is going into the task sequence and replacing the current partitioning step with either running a partition program or your own diskpart / format script. Either works – I personally have a task sequence for “Existing Machine” for each OS I have on my key, and that task sequence does not run the default partition / format step, but instead runs Partition Wizard:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/141228-mdt-2010/

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by nitroshift

nitroshift — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:37:28 +0000

What course should I take if I already ahve the hard-disk partitioned (partition 0 and partition 1) where partition 1 has data that I want to keep? More precise, I want to work “only” on partition 0. At the moment, using this tutorial, I found myself with hard-disk wiped and no data (which I recovered, fortunately).

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by tony62

tony62 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:36:38 +0000

tony62 : @Dan I have the same error: Error detected running command: ‘C:\Windows\system32\bcdedit.exe -store “\\VBOXSVR\DaRT\Hybrid_Media\Content\Boot\bcd” /timeout 30′ Exit code is: 1 Error text is: The boot configuration data store could not be opened. Incorrect function. BcdEdit returned an error.

All fixed

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by tony62

tony62 — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:33:17 +0000

@Dan
I have the same error:

Error detected running command: ‘C:\Windows\system32\bcdedit.exe -store “\\VBOXSVR\DaRT\Hybrid_Media\Content\Boot\bcd” /timeout 30′ Exit code is: 1
Error text is: The boot configuration data store could not be opened. Incorrect function.
BcdEdit returned an error.

Comment on Adding additional boot options to your deployment USB key by cluberti

cluberti — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:01:27 +0000

Not sure, as DaRT 5.0 is based on WinPE 1.0 (xp-based), not WinPE 2.x or 3.x (Vista/Win7). If you can find a way to copy the tools themselves from a DaRT 5.0 CD and copy them to a new WinPE built from the WAIK, this could be done. I don’t have any need at all for DaRT 5.0 anymore, so I haven’t invested any time to do this.

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by cluberti

cluberti — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:52:23 +0000

@Ed Norman
I would suggest this:
1. Install WDS on your Server 2008 machine (which you’ve already done).
2. Install the WAIK and MDT on that Server 2008 machine as well.
3. Use MDT to create a task sequence, and Update the Deployment Share (no need to build media, just follow up to Updating the Deployment Share in the “Putting it all together” section).
4. Open WDS, and browse to the boot images folder under your server.
5. Right-click the Boot Images folder, and select the option to add a boot image – browse to your LiteTouchx86.wim or LiteTouchx64.wim file in your deployment share (for example, mine are located in \DeploymentShare\Boot), and add the .wim.
6. Once you’ve got one (or both, if creating both x86 and x64 boot wims) of the LiteTouch .wim files added as a boot image, you can then PXE boot a client, select the LiteTouch image from the list (if there is only one boot image defined, you won’t get a choice – it’ll use the only one available), and it’ll boot into MDT just as it would from a USB key.

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by Ed Norman

Ed Norman — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:18:11 +0000

I am walking blindly with this technology with a slim bit of light slowly growing. Did I mention slow !?! Not to mention that most tech’s vocabulary including mine don’t generally include the word “slow” being an indicater of lack of patience, not one my better attributes. Honestly, I’m not certain about the questions to ask; thus my stumbling through you forum. By the way, thank you much for your patience in adavnce.

If I’m using a Win2k8 with WDS installed, is there a need to have WDT and WAIK ? If not, how do I create boot images and then images to be installed ? Is there a better order of installation for one product or all 3 ?

As the saying goes, I know enough about this to be dangerous but thankful for a test environment.

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by cluberti

cluberti — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:09:25 +0000

@Ed Norman
What are you looking for specifically? Are you looking for technical details? If you’re new to this, you probably don’t realize how complex PXE and network booting is .

It suffices to say, if you have a DHCP server, a WDS server, and boot images configured in WDS for a client to access, the only part you actually need to “know” is that the PXE client goes through DORA to get an IP from the DHCP server, and uses options 66 and 67 to determine the boot (WDS) server and boot image (the .com file used to bootstrap the environment). You’ll then see and select a boot image from the list, which will take over from the PXE bootstrap and load Windows PE over the network.

There’s a step-by-step guide for Server 2008 and 2008 R2 on WDS on Technet you might want to read:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771670(WS.10).aspx

There’s also a technical reference on WDS you may be interested in:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754627(WS.10).aspx

There’s a simple beginner writeup on MSFN on WDS/PXE/DHCP here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/113927-a-step-by-step-guide-to-setting-up-wds-for-pxe/

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by Ed Norman

Ed Norman — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:36:54 +0000

Thank you for the direction. I am now working to setup a PXE server but still have some surrounding confusion. Would you explain more about how the PXE enabled workstation “calls” the imaging server, how a Win PE or LiteTouch PE environment is loaded from the imaging server, how the imaging server creates a LiteTouch or Win PE “boot” (I’m guessing at this) ? Either on your site or another, can you point to a place that can give more information ? Starting simple and building on that would make it a lot easier for me. Further assistance would be very helpful and appreciated.

Comment on MDT 2010 and deployment from a USB key by cluberti

cluberti — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:13:45 +0000

@Ed Norman
The best way to do this would be to use a mixture of MDT and Windows Deployment Services (WDS). You place the LiteTouch PE images that MDT generates as it’s boot images onto the WDS server as boot images, and the clients can then PXE boot and allow you to run these via PXE over the network from the WDS server (this can also be the server you have MDT installed on). MDT will run entirely over the network, allowing you to use the MDT wizard to run any configured task sequences in MDT from the LiteTouch PE booted from WDS.

You can do this with a mixture of USB keys and MDT/WDS as well, but assuming clients can use PXE I see no reason to keep USB media for anything but offline installs. It allows you to never have to have a USB key or any other physical devices with you to run an image on a machine – if the client can PXE boot and you can press the F12 key, you’ve got a deployment solution.