Taking a FULL offline image of a reference machine, including existing drivers / programs etc

[jonrowe81]

Is there a way to take a full complete image for an offline kit that grabs all drivers/programs/everything where I could boot off a USB jump drive and copy the reference image byte for byte over to another identical machine?

Example, we just bought 200 Lenovo Yoga 12 Tablets, all wireless (no ethernet) and I need to make a reference image to copy.

It shouldn't be this hard, but i'm running into a lot of issues.

If you can recommend a way to make a full reference image, i'm all ears. I know i'm making this harder than it should be.

Thanks!

[anyweb]

that's not the recommended way today, what we do recommend is you create your reference image on virtual hardware (hyperv, vmware) and add as much apps or as few, plus customizations to that image before capturing it, you then deploy that captured image via a task sequence that contains multiple apply driver package steps which use WMI to determine the hardware it is on and apply the correct driver pack,

 

whether you use MDT to create the reference image or ConfigMgr it's up to you,

cheers

niall

[jonrowe81]

I am having issues getting my standard way of reference imaging working, since this computer does not have an ethernet adapter.

 

I may be overlooking something very simple, but I don't have a Lenovo Ethernet adapter so I am unable to pxe. If i'm not going the route of complete image / almost exactly like duplicating the harddrive, I need help getting a full offline image working (USB Adapter) where it will successfully lay down the image, software, drivers, but then join wireless network so it can join the domain and install sccm client/etc.

 

Is there a straight out of the box option using MDT?

[YPCC]

Use bootable media. Create a boot media usb key from sccm, boot to your sccm environment and choose ur task sequence.

 

This is basically a PXE, without the pxe

[YPCC]

If ur wifi drivers work in winpe that is