Problem Deploying XP With WDS on Server 2008r2

[drclean]

Hi All,

 

I work in a large school system and am the Technology Coordinator at a school, I do not have access to the SCCM confidmgr console (I wish i did so I could use the windowsnoob HTA) so I do have to do all of my deployments though WDS /w SIM and MDT.

 

All that being said I have a physical Windows Server 2008r2 enterprise server that I use for WDS deployments of Win 7 and script all the answers with SIM, I do have a need to send out XP to some of our older systems.

 

I have created the image of the XP system in virtualbox and installed sysprep and created my wim of it using a capture image I have on my wds server, I transfered it to the server and added it to my installation collection.

 

My issue is with deployment, with vista and windows 7/8 you have a boot.wim that you can use to load up the pe environment though with XP aparently you do not, I tried using a vista boot.wim and it does not see my xp image on wds at all so im pretty sure this is a dumb question but how the heck do you launch the deployment?

 

It seems that everything I have read on the net is centered around using wds on server 2003 /w RIS not on server 2008 with the new wds.

 

Please help,

Paul

[Rocket Man]

You could try this...

http://robwhitehouse...yment-services/

 

I know XP is much different when deploying with WDS...but I think if you use these answerfiles and edit them and follow the instructions correctly you will also have an unattended deployment of XP.

 

By the way the way that I accomplished the XP to load was to disable all other images on the server and leaving the XP the only image available, but it did require a few steps of user interaction so it was not fully unattended....and also the win7 boot.wim should boot into the WDS image pool and pick up the images.....so I do not know why it is not pickng up the XP image....it is after all a wim image format of XP.

 

Unfortunately i did not get a chance to try out the above as we rolled out all windows 7 that semester and abolished XP

 

Good luck with it

 

Rocket Man

[WinOutreach4]

Are you booting to a 64-bit boot image? You will only see 64-bit images unless you boot to a 32-bit boot image.

 

Have you setup MDT completely? There is no need to use install images in WDS if you are running MDT. MDT can use WDS as a deployment method, and it will make it easier for you in the long run. All you have to do is replace the boot images in WDS with the ones that can be created in MDT when you update the deployment share (LiteTouchPE_x86.wim and LiteTouchPE_x64.wim). Once you have your deployment share all setup and the proper boot images in WDS, then you would import your Windows XP image into MDT as an operating system, create a task sequence for it, and when you PXE boot, choose the LiteTouchPE_x86 boot image. You will get a list of all your Task Sequences to choose from. And since you can run MDT from your technician machine, you will not have to log into the server very often. This short video will show you how to import your custom image and create the task sequence.

 

Hope this helps,

David

Windows Outreach Team – IT pro

[drclean]

David,

 

No we are using the 32it version of xp but we do have 32 and 64 bit versions of 7 that I have built. As I really have not gotten all that deep into playing with MDT I completely forgot that I could do OS deployments out of it by adding the wims from its litetouch media and in fact I already have that as a boot option just need to add the precreated wim capture that I took of the winxp machine, Sorry for my noobishness.

 

Thanks for the help.

Paul

[WinOutreach4]

Paul,

I was referring to the boot options. When you turn on the computer and get it to network boot, the options for booting can be either 32 bit WindowsPE or 64 bit Windows PE. The 64 bit Windows PE will not display 32 bit OSes for deployment. If you can see your 32 bit Windows 7 image, then that is not the problem.

 

However, you should be fine with using the LiteTouchPE_x86 boot image once you have the custom XP image imported to MDT and you create the task sequence for it. Let us know how this works out for you.

 

David

Windows Outreach Team - IT Pro

[drclean]

David,

 

Thanks I was aware of that already, I built out the xp deploy task sequence yesterday and it worked like a champ, again thanks for the help.

 

-Paul

[WinOutreach4]

Great! I'm glad it's all solved.