anyweb

Step 10 This guide assumes that you have first completed the following 9 steps in the order listed below. Create an OSD capture CD and then captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should have imported that captured Vista image into BDD, and then updated BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. You should then have created a new build in BDD for the captured WIM image. You should then have created and updated the BDD Deployment point (OSD/ZTI) and then updated Windows PE to support WMI. In addition, you must have imported the captured Vista WIM file into SMS and then created an OS Deploy Program. Distribute software using SMS distribution points. In the SMS tree pane, right-click Windows Vista Enterprise (it's under Image Packages), point to All Tasks and select Distribute Software. Click next and select the package we created earlier (Windows Vista Enterprise). Select the SMS distribution points you want to copy the package to and click next. You will be asked if you want to advertise a program, click yes. We will select the program we created earlier (VistaRefresh) and click next. and then we have to select which collections to advertise to (for example, all Windows XP computers) so click on browse, and browse to the collections that you want to select. (In an enterprise environment you would not do this, you would split your computers down into smaller collections for Vista deployment). Next, you can specify the advertisement name, and add some comments ;-) if you wish you can select subsets of the collections you've already chosen in the next screen and then choose your advertisement scedule and expiration date (if any). Finally you get to assign the program (or not), choose yes if you want to test it. and at last we will see a summary, click Finish to complete the action. Update the SMS distribution points. If you only want to update the SMS distribution points, then in the SMS tree pane, right-click Windows Vista Enterprise (it's under Image Packages), point to All Tasks and select Update Distribution Points. You'll be informed that this may take some time. Click yes to continue. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 9 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should have imported that captured Vista image into BDD, and then updated BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. You should then have created a new build in BDD for the captured WIM image. You should then have created and updated the BDD Deployment point (OSD/ZTI) and then updated Windows PE to support WMI. In addition, you must have imported the captured Vista WIM file into SMS. Create a new Program. Open the SMS administrator console, select Image Packages, expand it, and highlight Windows Vista Enterprise. In the results pane, right-click Programs, point to New and select Operating System Program. On the Welcome to the New OS Program Wizard page, click Next. On the New Operating System Program options page, type VistaRefresh in the Name box and click Next. On the Licensing settings page, select Product key not required and click Next. For membership settings, select Domain and type the name of your domain in the text box, click Set and type in the required credentials. Remove the tick from 'Create random password for the local administrator on the target computer' (BDD will take care of that for us), click next and finally Finish. You may be informed that you need to update your SMS distribution points. Note: When you create a new OS Deployment package or program, or modify an OS Deployment program’s properties, SMS creates an associated log file with each action and stores the log file in the SMS\Logs folder along with the other SMS log files. These three OS Deployment log files are: OSDNewPackageWizard.log OSDNewProgramWizard.log OSDProgramProperties.log congratulations, you have now completed 50% of the Zero Touch setup steps, only 9 more to go :-) If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 8 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then Captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should have imported that captured Vista image into BDD, and then updated BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. You should then have created a new build in BDD for the captured WIM image. Lastly, you should have created and updated the BDD Deployment point (OSD/ZTI) and then updated Windows PE to support WMI. Prepare a share for the package. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to a drive with lots of free space. Create a new folder and call it Packages. Right-click Packages and click Sharing and Security. Click Share this folder and click Permissions and then click Add. In the Enter the object names to select box, type Administrators, click Check Names, and click OK. Click Allow next to Full Control and click OK, click OK again to finish. Import the captured Vista WIM image. Open the SMS administrator console, right-click Image Packages, point to New, and select Operating System Image Package. On the Welcome to the New Operating System Package Wizard page, click Next. When the wizard appears, enter Windows Vista Enterprise as the package name, point to the Windows Vista image we imported into BDD earlier namely E:\Distribution\Operating Systems\Captured Vista01\Vista01.wim. Next, type in the path for your package source eg: \\servername\packages\ click Next and then Finish (this will take some time). When done, you may be informed that the SMS distribution points will require updating because of the changes made to the Operating System Package (click OK if you do). We will be doing this later in the entire process. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 7 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then Captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should have imported that captured Vista image into BDD, and then updated BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. You should then have created a new build in BDD for the captured WIM image. Lastly, you should have created and updated the BDD Deployment point (OSD/ZTI). Update Windows PE to support WMI. The version of Windows PE that ships with the OSD Feature Pack does not have WMI enabled. To support Zero Touch Installation, we need to update the Windows PE image with one that has WMI enabled. When we created the ZTI deployment point, BDD created an updated Windows PE source folder. Startup the SMS Administrator Console, and in the tree pane, expand Site Database, select Image Packages on the left and right-click it, point to All Tasks and select Update Windows PE. An update Windows PE wizard will start, click Next. When prompted for the source folder enter the path to your ZTI\boot\source directory that was created when we created the ZTI share. I entered my path which is C:\ZTI\Boot\Source, click next to continue and click Finish when complete. note: the screenshot below show's a different path for ZTI, that is because I completely reinstalled the Zero Touch components on my server to test all the 18 steps for any possible errors, the path c:\zti or d:\zti doesnt matter, as long as you tell the wizard where they really are. After a while, when the copying is done you should see this If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 6 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then Captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should have imported that captured Vista image into BDD, and then updated BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. You should then have created a new build in BDD for the captured WIM image. In Deployment Workbench, expand Deploy and then select Deployment Points. Right click Deployment Points and choose New. When the wizard appears select SMS 2003 OSD as the deployment type and click next. Give your deployment point a description and then make sure to give it a share name (in the screenshot below I name the share ZTI2$ as I already have OSD setup and running on ZTI$) next decide how you want USMT to control users data backup, and then click create. Finally it will prompt you for the location of the SMS OSD scripts, which by default at in X:\SMS\OSD where X is the drive you installed SMS on. Once done, we'll get a message that the deployment point is now created but that we must configure the Windows PE options. To configure the Windows PE options we can now right click on our new build in Deployment Workbench, and choose Properties. Select the builds tab. If you have more than the OSD build we just created (for example if you already have a light touch build added) then you may see a RED Exclamation mark flashing, it does this because by default Deployment Workbench will auto-select ALL build ID's available, even though it can only use OSD builds. So DESELECT the non-OSD builds and the red exclamation mark should disappear. Next click on the Windows PE 2004/2005 tab and once again you'll see red flashing exclamation marks. use the drop down menus and select the Windows PE 2004/2005 as the first option and Windows XP SP2 as the second as I show here. Also, make sure that Generate a generic flat bootable ISO image is selected. Click OK to finish. Now that it's all configured, you must update the Deployment point by right clicking on our deployment listed and choose Update. Once complete, you should now see something like this in your Deployment Workbench. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 5 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then Captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should have imported that captured Vista image into BDD, and then updated BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. In Deployment Workbench, select Builds in the left column. Right click it and choose New. In the wizard that appears, enter your build ID, build name and some comments about the build. Next we have to select the image we imported into BDD from the list available We don't have to specify a product key at this time so choose 'do not specify'. You can now enter some of the User's information into the next screen including setting their home page Finally add the local administrators password and click Create to make the build in BDD. You should now see your build added in Deployment Workbench. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 4 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then Captured a Vista image (wim). Next you should import that captured Vista image. Once done, you are ready for the next step (this one) which is to update BDD with your Windows PE and XP OS files. Adding Windows PE to the drop down menu. To add Windows PE to the operating systems in deployment workbench, in the left pane, click on Distribution Share, in the list below that, highlight Operating Systems and right click it and choose New. When prompted about the type of operating system to add, choose Full Set of Source files. Click next and point it to where the WinPE cd or source files are located, then Click Next again and give the destination directory a name (WindowsPE2005). Finally click copy to start copying the OS. Adding Windows Source. As we did above with adding Windows PE to the operating systems part of Deployment Workbench, we will now add Windows XP Service Pack 2 by pointing the location to your Windows XP cd. To recap:- In Deployment workbench, select operating systems in the left pane, right-click and choose New, then select * Full set of source files * Point to the location of your Windows XP cd (or Windows 2003 Server CD) * for directory name call it Windows XP Professional SP2 * choose Copy to start copying the files. We have now added both the Windows PE 2004 (or Windows PE 2005) and Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003) source files to the operating systems section of Deployment Workbench. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 3 This guide assumes that you have first created an OSD capture CD and then Captured a Vista image (wim). That captured image (Vista01.wim) is the image we will use for this guide. Start up the BDD 2007 Deployment Workbench and right click on Operating Systems in the left column (under Distribution Share), select New and from the wizard that appears select Custom Image file. In the next screen, select the path to the Wim file we captured previously and select the first option of Setup files not needed as this is an OSD deployment. and then we specify the directory that should be created (in the BDD 2007 distribution share) finally we click on copy to copy the Wim to the BDD 2007 distribution share. Once it is finished copying if you refresh Operating Systems (right click and choose Refresh) you'll see your newly added capture to the list. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 2 The first thing you need to do is have your Windows Vista Capture CD created. Once complete, boot your Windows Vista client computer (do not boot from the Capture CD yet) and verify that your Windows Vista Client computer is not a member of any domain, if it is, remove it from the domain and restart. Verify that the computer is part of a Workgroup. The computer must be part of a Workgroup otherwise the image capture process will not work. To do this, right click on the Computer icon (in the start menu, or on the desktop if present) and choose Properties, then choose Advanced system settings from the Tasks list on the left. When the System Properties window appears, click on the Computer Name tab. If the computer is listed as part of a domain then click on Change and remove it from the domain, type the name of a workgroup to join and click ok. Once you have removed the computer from the domain and rebooted, we will insert the Vista Capture CD which we created earlier and browse it. Run the SMS 2003 Image Capture Wizard. Locate a file on the cd called OSDICW.exe and double click on it, this will start the SMS 2003 Image Capture Wizard. If you don't have the SMS Client installed on this machine then you'll get an error. If so, install it and try again. Click next to continue and input the required details. eg:- Image file name:- Vista01.wim Network location:- \\servername\captures Account name:- \\servername\Administrator Password:- ********** Note that if you do not have a folder ready for the above, then create one and give it the appropriate access you require. (I created one called captures and shared it). If your network capture share (or network) does not appear when you click browse then type the name of it manually (plus username/password) and then click next. If you get an error that states the below then log off and log back on as local Administrator (not just a user with local admin privs). Next you will be prompted for Sysprep information, enter it as you want and click next. You will now have the chance to give your image capture some image properties. eg:- Operating System: Windows Vista ™ Enterprise comments: Capturing a Windows Vista image (wim) for Zero Touch from http://www.windows-noob.com and so on... Clicking next at this point will capture the image from this computer to the network location you specified earlier. Note that the last message prompts you to make sure that CD is set to boot first in the bios settings before continuing, In my case, when the wizard was finished it shut the machine down. I then rebooted onto the CD and pressed a key to start from the CD when prompted. Failure to press the key when prompted will mean that the Vista image will boot and sysprep will run and you'll be twiddling your thumbs waiting for sysprep to finish so that you can start the process all over again, so be warned ! Once done, Windows PE will boot and the SMS 2003 Image Capture Wizard will appear. The capture process will now begin! Please be aware that depending on your hardware this can take a long time (2 or more hours) and the resultant WIM file can be very large also (greater than 5GB). Once everything is complete, you'll be informed that the capture is complete, you click ok and then the system reboots, and you'll have a Vista01.wim file in your \\server\captures folder. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

Step 1 In SMS 2003 administrator console, highlight the Image Packages section as below. Note: you must have installed the OSD feature pack to see 'Image Packages'. If you havn't installed the OSD feature pack then Click here to download and install the SMS 2003 OSD Feature Pack Update, once downloaded, double click the exe to extract it somewhere, I extracted it to c:\sms and then ran the OSDeployment_Setup.EXE file from within that folder to install the OSD Feature Pack. Once the feature pack is installed, it's safe to delete the setup folder (c:\sms if you did the same as me). Right click on Image Packages and choose All Tasks then Create Operating System Image Capture CD. When the wizard appears click next then you will be given the option to specify additional network and storage drivers that are not included with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (from a local path) for integration within Windows PE. Next we can specify the local path where we want the Captured ISO to be created. finally clicking on next allows the wizard to extract the contents which will then hopefully create the capture CD. If you get a creation failed error message, then simply retry the steps above and verify all values are correct, in particular any driver paths for Windows PE. the finished ISO file can now be burned to CD for use on your target computer. Please note, that if you boot a target computer with this CD without carrying out the next part of the process that you may get a Windows PE error which states:- If you get the error above, then do exactly as it says and read this post. If you found this guide useful then please Digg it.

A recently-released roadmap for the next major Window release – Windows 7 – indicates that Microsoft is planning to release the new operating system in the second half of 2009, rather than the anticipated release date of some time in 2010. more > http://apcmag.com/7874/windows_7_to_be_released_next_year

Zero Touch is very difficult to setup and complete, but seeing how it's done is indeed very helpful, so please do take a look at the following 3 videos to give you a better overview of Zero Touch. Well worth viewing especially if you can't get Zero Touch to work. cheers anyweb

Natural Language Search in Windows Vista more info > http://mike.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F...!7837.entry

If you have an application that runs from a network share, then updating the executable may be difficult if it is in use already. To find out if the file is in use try elevated command prompt and type: Openfiles /Query to see what files are open, then use one of the options under Openfiles /Disconnect /? to close the connections.

download is here > microsoft.com "The Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate is now available to the public. In addition to previously released updates, SP1 contains changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several new technologies. SP1 also addresses some management, deployment, and support challenges." Ars reports that it finally enables the hotpatching support in Vista. more info > http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;DisplayLang=en via osnews.com

Microsoft has released a toolkit to let businesses block service pack updates for Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003. Although service packs - particularly in the case of Vista - are keenly awaited by many users, some businesses prefer to test the packs before upgrading to assure compatibility with existing hardware and applications. more info > http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000...39291415,00.htm via osnews.com

"Leading up to next week's public beta-test release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate, Microsoft today has published a 17-page document outlining in fine detail exactly what difference SP1 makes to Vista. Some of the contents has been shared in bits in the past, but this is so far the most comprehensive 'changelog' we've ever seen and probably will see as the final version is not expected to differ much from the RC, with the exception of WGA modifications." linked via > http://osnews.com/story.php/19024/Microsof...a-SP1-Changelog

For those of you that don't know nlite is an excellent tool for patching your Windows XP (and 2000/server) Installation cd's (iso's) with hotfixes, patches and more. I recently used it to add a hotfix for High Definition Audio, and that process worked great, however when I pxe booted my client to the RIS server to test if the hotfix had been integrated correctly with the new ISO (which i mounted using daemon tools, then imported into RIS via rissetup), I got the following RIS setup error during file copy operations Now the above error is safe to ignore, and if like me you created the nlite working directory as c:\XP_source, you'll easily be able to find the file in question. The file will be in a compressed state and by default located in C:\XP_source\I386\ and called nlite.in_ open a command prompt and let's extract it using EXPAND.EXE NLITE.IN_ nlite.inf ok done. now you can copy that expanded file to your i386 folder on the RIS server and test PXE booting again (ris) cheers anyweb

here's a sample with Domain joining. [Unattended] DriverSigningPolicy=Ignore OemSkipEula = Yes OemPreinstall = Yes InstallFilesPath = C:\Sysprep\I386 [GuiUnattended] AdminPassword=windowsnoob OEMSkipWelcome = 1 OEMSkipRegional = 0 [UserData] FullName=Someuser OrgName=Windows-Noob ComputerName=Somepc ProductID=xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx [Identification] JoinDomain=mydomain DomainAdmin=dom_adder DomainAdminPassword=somethingl33t [Networking] InstallDefaultComponents=Yes [Display] BitsPerPel = _BPP_ Vrefresh = _HRTZ_ Xresolution = _XRES_ Yresolution = _YRES_ [SysprepCleanup] Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = intelide Service = aic78xx Service = aic78xx Service = aic78xx Service = aic78xx Service = aic78u2 Service = aic78u2 Service = adpu160m Service = adpu160m Service = adpu160m Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = a320raid Service = aac Service = fasttx2k Service = fasttx2k Service = fasttx2k Service = fasttx2k Service = fasttx2k Service = fasttx2k Service = symmpi Service = symmpi Service = symmpi Service = symmpi Service = symmpi Service = symmpi Service = iastor Service = iaahci Service = aarich Service = aarich Service = aarich Service = vmscsi Service = vmscsi Service = vmscsi

you can edit a batch file (shutdown.bat) and paste the following into it shutdown.exe -s -f -t 5 -c "shutting down the computer now" save the file and you can 'call' it either using Windows Task Manager (start/control panael, scheduled tasks, add scheduled task) the -s in the code above tells shutdown.exe to shut the system down, if you want to reboot the machine change it to -r the -f switch forces running applications to close without warning and the -c displays a comment box to warn the user of the coming shutdown, in addition it adds this info the the eventviewer. the 5 after -t is the number of seconds before the machine is shutdown. cheers anyweb

This article assumes you have setup BDD 2007 already and configured it to do a Lite Touch Installation of Windows Vista. Step 1. Do a Lite Touch installation of Windows Vista on a client, once done, update Windows using Windows Update (requires an internet connection), reboot when prompted and continue until all available updates are applied. Step 2. Open up control panel and click on Programs and Features. In the left pane, click on View Installed Updates. In the right pane, you will see all the Security/hotfix and other updates that Windows update has applied to the computer, and now you must individually write down the KB (knowledgebase number) of each update, for example Update for Microsoft Windows (KB941649). Step 3. Using google (or your favorite search engine) search online for the knowledgebase article number plus MSU. EG: google for KB941649 msu You will get pages of hits, with one of the first 5 at least having the correct link to download the MSU file. We need to download the MSU file as that is required by BDD 2007. Clicking on the first link in our search results from google brings us to Microsofts download page for the KB941649 msu file (validation required). Download the file and save it on your desktop. Step 4. Copy the MSU file (Windows6.0-KB941649-v2-x86.msu) you saved in Step 3 to your BDD server, then open up the BSS 2007 DeploymentWorkbench and click on Distribution Share in the left pane, followed by OS Packages. Right-click on OS Packages and choose New, enter the location of your MSU file (preferable copy it to it's OWN folder eg:- Click Add when ready and the msu file package will be added to your OS packages in BDD 2007 if you wish to verify this you can browse your distribution folder as listed below and you'll see that BDD has already created subfolders where the KB files now reside. Step 5. repeat the process from Step 2 to Step 4 until there are no more Windows Updates (msu files) to download and add to your BDD server from the list of applied updates. Step 6. Deploy Windows Vista to a client and once done open up control panel/Programs and Features and click on 'view installed updates'. You will see all the updates that you previously applied to your BDD 2007 OS Packages are now installed.

don't lose hope, because there are lots of ways to recover your important data, first of all do NOT use your hard disc anymore until you are ready to start recovering data, it would be a good idea to connect the drive as a SLAVE device in your computer (with another drive as MASTER), of course if it's a laptop then you will need to use other options, such as connecting the drive in a modular bay or connecting it externally via USB. So how do we recover the data then ? Well if the disc is still readable and you only accidently formatted it or re-partitioned it then you can buy the following software GetDataBack NTFS Simply install the software on a working computer running windows XP (or 2000) and as I said earlier mount the drive that you accidently formatted as a slave drive, then using the getdataback NTFS software, highlight the drive/directories you want to recover and you'll get the chance to copy all the data FROM the slave drive TO the master drive (so obviously, you'll need lots of free space on the MASTER drive). Once done, you can re-format, re-partition the SLAVE drive and copy the data back. Ok, what about if the drive itself is giving errors (bad sectors, read/write failures, clicking), well if it is then all hope is still not lost, get over to Knoppix.net and download the LiveCD. You can then boot your computer (change bios to boot to CD first) from the LiveCD and once it is booted, you should see your drive partitions listed on the Desktop. At this point you can mark the data you want to recover and copy it to your MASTER drive OR to an external USB hard disc. The advantage here is that as Knoppix is linux based it won't abort the file copy process like Windows does, it will prompt you to retry again and again, and if it fails to copy a file, you can skip and it'll continue onto the next file. Finally if both of the above don't help as the drive is too damaged or unreadable consider using SpinRite 6, this software from GRC will do extensive bit read/write/sector analysis and can recover bad/unreadable sectors, but be warned the process can take HOURS if not days (depending on the hard drive size and damage to the files/sectors/heads.) hope this helps cheers anyweb

more info > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2200774,00.asp and > http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/windows-xp-s...lysis-included/ What's new in SP3 ? more info > http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2200799,00.asp

The most up to date version of this Guide will always be here. Reproduction of this guide is allowed as long as it links back to here Verify that you have the correct infrastructure in place Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) requires the following products to be installed in your network infrastructure:- * Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (or later) - detailed setup guide here * SMS 2003 - detailed setup guide here * SMS 2003 OSD Feature Pack Update * Windows Deployment Services in Windows Server 2003 Note: If you want a Microsoft checklist of the steps required to get ZTI working, see this page on Technet. Prepare the deployment environment. For the purpose of this article, I'm assuming that you have already installed and configured SMS 2003 and SQL. In addition this has been tested and verified to be working for Windows Vista RTM (i.e.: I have not tested it with Vista SP1 yet). Install BDD 2007 and then install USMT either manually by downloading the msi package or by installing it using the Components section of DeploymentWorkbench (the MMC console for BDD 2007). USMT captures desktop, and application settings, as well as user accounts and user files, and then migrates them to a new Windows installation. Next, install the SMS 2003 OSD Feature Pack. Click here to download and install the SMS 2003 OSD Feature Pack Update, once downloaded, double click the exe to extract it somewhere, I extracted it to c:\sms and then ran the OSDeployment_Setup.EXE file from within that folder to install the OSD Feature Pack. Once the feature pack is installed, it's safe to delete the setup folder (c:\sms if you did the same as me). Once installed, you can start up the SMS Administrator Console and you'll see a new setting in the left pane called Image Packages. You are now ready to setup Zero Touch using the 18 Step guide below. Zero Touch in 18 Steps Create an OSD capture CD. Capture a Vista image (wim). Note: To use separate computernames then read this post. Import the captured Vista WIM image into BDD. Import WinPE2004/2005 & required OS files into BDD. Create a new build in BDD for the captured WIM image. Create and update the BDD Deployment point (OSD/ZTI). Update SMS WinPE from the BDD/ZTi deployment point. Import the captured Vista WIM image into SMS. Create an OS deploy program. Update the distribution point for the OS deploy program. The following four steps in the process are not specific to Zero Touch Installation, but make the distribution of resources easier and more scalable in an enterprise environment. Copy driver resources for SMS packaging. Create a package from the driver resources. Add the driver resources to a distribution point. Update the SMS distribution point. Update customsettings.ini and bootstrap.ini in BDD. Update each OSD phase with BDD ZTI files and scripts. Copy osdshell.lab.exe to osdshell.exe. Create an install CD. That's it, you are done ! If you liked this guide and would like to see more FREE guides like it then please help me by Digging it.