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This has been posted about the web many times, but I wanted to post it here for folks who read this blog as well.  I love space imagery, so using the NASA picture of the day as a theme/wallpaper seemed interesting, and I know it had been done but had never really figured out how to do it (I didn’t really try hard, either, but that’s neither here nor there).  I managed to make a .theme file that works with the NASA Large Image Of The Day RSS feed, so I’ll post the contents here in the off chance anyone wants to use it.  Obviously it can be modified to use any RSS feed containing images, I’d suppose, by changing the DisplayName (for cosmetic reasons) and the RssFeed parameter (for obvious functional reasons).  I used the post on this from the Engineering Win7 blog as a guideline, so read that if you want more info.
Here’s the file, in it’s entirety:

OK, so I haven’t had a chance to finish up either of the two posts I’ve been working on, so to start I’m merging them into one larger MDT post.  Secondly, however, I’ve also been working with a friend of mine on creating a logon script for his environment that will replace a certain other tool they are using for logon management for their mix of 9x and 2000 workstations.  They’re slowly upgrading their back-end environment in preparation for a migration to Windows 7 on the clients, and they wanted to see if they could move from <product> to logon scripts and group policy (they are going to be using MDT and SCCM for deployment and lifecycle management).  They had to try and completely replace their current solution with group policy and a logon script (or scripts), and this has been accomplished.

I’ve been a little inactive, but life’s been a bit crazy as of late.  Things have calmed down, and I’m working on getting posts together to integrate things like Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Live Essentials, and Visual Studio 2008 (including SP1 and updates, if possible) into a task sequence to use with your installer.

Check back in a week or two to see if I’ve made any progress or not .

Just a quick note to point out that the final release of MDT 2010 has released to web (RTW) and is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3bd8561f-77ac-4400-a0c1-fe871c461a89

One of the more interesting things in MDT is the “Application bundle” application install option.  What an application bundle allows is the ability to install multiple applications, in order, as dependencies.  Think of it more as a logical container for applications that need to be installed, perhaps in a specific order, or as prerequisites for another application (like, for instance, installing Visual Studio 2008 prerequisites, Visual Studio itself, and then the latest service pack).

Adding the application(s)

To create an application bundle that will show up in the list of applications to install (or be available to configure via a task sequence), you first need to add all of the applications to MDT that will make up the bundle.  This is done similar to adding Office 2007 as I documented in my post on creating an MDT deployment point – you must create a New Application and add it’s source files to the deployment share.  I’ll document quickly how to add the Windows Live Essentials components to your deployment share and “bundle” them (instructions on getting the .msi packages you’ll need from the Windows Live Essentials downloadable package can be found here, if you do actually want to try this).

Having a USB key that will install multiple versions of Windows is great, but what if you want to add other Windows PE images to it, above and beyond the installers?  For example, what if you wanted to add a recovery environment, like the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT), or a BartPE environment, or any other Windows PE-based environments?  Well, it’s not that hard to do, and I’ll document how to do it with the Microsoft DaRT x86 and x64 recovery ISOs that it creates in this example.

Adding the DaRT files

First, you will need to copy the files from the MS DaRT WinPE ISO image to your “Content” folder that was created when you used MDT 2010 as per my previous post.  The content folder should look something like this:

And the contents of the MS DaRT ISO image, once extracted to the hard disk, will look something like this:

To go along with my previous post on deploying Windows via MDT 2010, here is a list of the “default” keys that Windows uses when you choose not to enter a product key during setup.  These keys of course will not activate, but you can enter them into your task sequences when you are prompted for a product key to use.  This will make your setup more unattended.

Here’s the list:

Windows Vista:

• Ultimate  -  VMCB9-FDRV6-6CDQM-RV23K-RP8F7
• Business  -  4D2XH-PRBMM-8Q22B-K8BM3-MRW4W
• Home Premium  -  X9HTF-MKJQQ-XK376-TJ7T4-76PKF
• Home Basic  -  RCG7P-TX42D-HM8FM-TCFCW-3V4VD
• Starter  -  X9PYV-YBQRV-9BXWV-TQDMK-QDWK4

Windows 7:

• Ultimate  -  D4F6K-QK3RD-TMVMJ-BBMRX-3MBMV
• Professional  -  HYF8J-CVRMY-CM74G-RPHKF-PW487
• Home Premium  -  RHPQ2-RMFJH-74XYM-BH4JX-XM76F
• Home Basic  -  YGFVB-QTFXQ-3H233-PTWTJ-YRYRV
• Starter  -  7Q28W-FT9PC-CMMYT-WHMY2-89M6G

Ever wanted to put every version of Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, and perhaps a version of XP or two on a single USB key?  No?  Then you’re probably normal.  If you’re like me, however, the thought has crossed your mind.  However, the daunting task of configuring said USB key to boot to some multiboot Linux distro or hacking a bit at bcdedit to boot a WinPE to handle it also made it something to avoid, at least for me, because, well, I tend to be lazy about these things.

However, after playing with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit for a bit, I realized I could probably make my USB key bend to my will and be said multi-bootable Windows OS installer, without a whole lot of work.  I set about to put all of those versions of Windows one one key, along with some unattended applications (for this blog post, I’m just adding Office 2007 to keep it short).