Personal WDS on Windows Server 2008 R2 Implementation Guide

 

1. Install, configure and update Windows server 2008 R2.
2. Add WDS (Deployment and Transport servers) and DHCP roles.
3. Download and Install the recent version of Windows AIK.
4. DHCP Configurations:
1. Create a scope and configure it with the required options.
5. Reference Computer Configurations:
1. Install windows, drivers, updates and applications.
2. Copy the “deploy” (including the sysprep files) folder from the windows DVD from the “Support” folder into the partition that you want to capture.
3. From the “Deploy” folder user the “Setupmgr.exe” to create an answer file for the mini setup wizard (sysprep.inf) and place it in the same folder as your sysprep files.
4. Use the “sysprep.exe” to sysprep the partition using mini, reseal and reboot options.
5. The client computer will restart, you can go to the Bios to check that the computer will be able to boot from the LAN (PXE).
6. Don’t go to the next step until you finish the WDS configurations.
7. When the computer restarts make sure you boot from LAN and after having an IP from the DHCP server press F12 to start connecting to the WDS server.
8. From the list of boot images select the capture image you created on the server and continue with the wizards until you have the complete imaged from this computer inside the image group you created.
6. WDS Configurations:
1. Server Properties:
1. General Tap:
1. No Configurations.
2. PXE Response Tap:
1. Select “Respond to all client computers (known and unknown)” option
2. Clear “Require administrator approval” option
3. PXE Response delay: 0
3. ADDS Tap:
1. Default Configurations.
4. Boot Tap:
1. For known and unknown clients select “Require user to press F12”
2. No default boot image.
5. Client Tap:
1. Check “enable unattended installation” option and point to the .xml answer file located in “C:\RemoteInstall\WdsClientUnattend”. (This is for Windows PE phase)
2. Leave other option to default.
6. DHCP Tap:
1. Check both check boxes.
7. Leave other taps to default configurations.
7. From the Windows 7 DVD inside the “Sources” folder copy the “boot.wim” file to your server hard disk.
8.  From the WDS console inside “Boot Images” add a new boot image and point to the Windows 7 boot.wim file.
9. Right click on the newly created boot image and select “Create Capture Image”
10. Now you should have 2 images and both are x86, if you need a x64 bit images you should repeat the steps but use the boot.wim file from Windows 7 x64 DVD:
1. The first boot image is for booting the client computer for installing the new install image.
2. The second capture image is for capturing an image from a reference computer.
3. Go to the “Install Images” node and right click and select “Add image group” with any name.
4. If you didn’t uploaded the install image from the reference computer to the WDS server through the capture wizard yet you can right click on “Install Images” node and select “Add install image” and point to the .wim file taken from the reference computer.
5. Now you can install this image on any client computer by booting the computer from LAN and use the first boot image (not the capture image) and when prompted select the install image you want and the setup will start.
11. Answer Files Configurations:
1. We have 2 answer files that we will use:
1. Sysprep answer file (sysprep.inf) for the mini setup wizard:
1. Created by the Setupmgr.exe from the deploy folder and placed on the sysprep folder on the reference computer.
1. Windows PE answer file (unattend.xml) for the Windows PE setup phase:
1. Download a sample from the web and customize it with “Windows system image manager” from the Windows AIK tools and place it inside the WDS configuration in the “Client” tap.
12. Extra Configurations:
1. You can open and manipulate the .Wim files by using “ImageX” command line tool from Windows AIK tools:
1. Open CMD and go to this path “Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86”
2. Create a folder in C:\ called “mount PE”
3. To mount the .wim file (extract it) use (where “c:\winpe\boot.wim” is the path to .wim file):
2. ImageX /mountrw c:\winpe\boot.wim 1 c:\mountPE
1. Now you can open the folder “mountPE” and start manipulating the files.
2. To dismount the .wim file back use:
3. ImageX /commit /unmount c:\mountPE