Unattended Vista Build - Failed first attempt
Unattended installations really do remove the pain from installing an operating system simply because they will answer all the routine questions of user names, serial numbers, country codes and can configure a fair chunk of the operating system.
Windows Vista, like operating system before it, will come with a tool to enable the creation of unattended installation files.
Vista is doing things slightly differently though. Whilst it's possible to create an unattend.xml file there is a whole lot more you can do in a new tool called Business Desktop Deployment (or BDD)
I'm on the BETA for this so armed with the latest BETA of BDD and the current release candidate version of Vista I set about creating a fully unattended install... Well, that was the plan at least. The reality was rather disappointing.
First of all, I created a Windows XP workstation as BDD won't install onto Windows 2000 Professional. Once XP is installed you need to install a couple of pre-requisites, namely .Net Framework 2.0 and MSXML 6. So these go onto the machine and finally I'm ready for BDD itself. This software installed very easily and very soon I was ready to go.
The first time I fired up the MMC snap in for BDD (called the deployment workbench) BDD crashed on me. A quick trip to Microsoft's page showed that installing MMC 3.0 should fix this and so another download later and BDD is running.
Windows Vista's installation is contained in a single .WIM (Windows IMage) file. You can really think of this as a giant zip archive containing the actual software - No more thousands of separate files - just one 4GB image file that contains all the versions of Vista.
To configure this there is another tool called the 'Microsoft Windows AIK' (Automated Installation Kit) - yes, even MORE acronyms to remember.
WAIK contains the Windows SIM (Sim Image Manager) and it's THIS that can make tweaks to the Vista WIM files and generate the answer files.
Unfortunately, Microsoft have made one small flaw. When using the current builds of Vista against the current builds of Windows System Image Manager the Image Manager crashes out with a very nasty error message. It seems that the WIM format has changed in any builds higher than 5800 and that the Windows System Image Manager cannot cope with it.
After this comedy of errors I've given up on unattended Vista builds for the moment but will take another look at them soon along with the entire BDD environment.
Windows Vista, like operating system before it, will come with a tool to enable the creation of unattended installation files.
Vista is doing things slightly differently though. Whilst it's possible to create an unattend.xml file there is a whole lot more you can do in a new tool called Business Desktop Deployment (or BDD)
I'm on the BETA for this so armed with the latest BETA of BDD and the current release candidate version of Vista I set about creating a fully unattended install... Well, that was the plan at least. The reality was rather disappointing.
First of all, I created a Windows XP workstation as BDD won't install onto Windows 2000 Professional. Once XP is installed you need to install a couple of pre-requisites, namely .Net Framework 2.0 and MSXML 6. So these go onto the machine and finally I'm ready for BDD itself. This software installed very easily and very soon I was ready to go.
The first time I fired up the MMC snap in for BDD (called the deployment workbench) BDD crashed on me. A quick trip to Microsoft's page showed that installing MMC 3.0 should fix this and so another download later and BDD is running.
Windows Vista's installation is contained in a single .WIM (Windows IMage) file. You can really think of this as a giant zip archive containing the actual software - No more thousands of separate files - just one 4GB image file that contains all the versions of Vista.
To configure this there is another tool called the 'Microsoft Windows AIK' (Automated Installation Kit) - yes, even MORE acronyms to remember.
WAIK contains the Windows SIM (Sim Image Manager) and it's THIS that can make tweaks to the Vista WIM files and generate the answer files.
Unfortunately, Microsoft have made one small flaw. When using the current builds of Vista against the current builds of Windows System Image Manager the Image Manager crashes out with a very nasty error message. It seems that the WIM format has changed in any builds higher than 5800 and that the Windows System Image Manager cannot cope with it.
After this comedy of errors I've given up on unattended Vista builds for the moment but will take another look at them soon along with the entire BDD environment.
posted by Gary Williams at
Thursday, November 09, 2006
3 Comments:
Could it be... "hasta la vista, baby"??! ;-)
By
Anonymous, At
Monday, November 13, 2006
BDD 2007 really is a step forward on the previous versions. The earlier versions were a little intimidating for a busy LAN admin...
After watching a few webcasts i was able to tackle BDD 2007 relatively easily. Although still in beta BDD works well and it was remarkably easy to through together a number of optional components.
Coupled with Virtual PC and some time over this quiet period I hope to make some worthwhile progress.
How did you get on?
By
Mike., At
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Webmail program for the major free email sites -
http://inovasphere.com/mmail.htm
My Mail 1.0 is configured to work with AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Linuxmail, and Yahoo. With My Mail 1.0 you get the benefit of premium services without having to pay site fees. My Mail 1.0 completely automates the process of sending and receiving mail from the major sites, saving you time and trouble.
My Mail 1.0 eliminates the need to visit web sites to send and receive mail, which increases the speed of sending and receiving email by over 80%, even if they do not offer what is known as POP3, IMAP and SMTP. My Mail 1.0's look is also fully customizable. One you use it, you'll never want to go back to the web site again to get your mail.
For complete details: http://inovasphere.com/mmail.htm
(Please feel free to delete this post if you don't want it on your blog. Thanks for the informative blog and opportunity to post.)
By
Free Webmail Program, At
Thursday, April 12, 2007
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