Windows Deployment, Part 11: Capture your gold master image

 

In the final article of this series, I will show to how to capture your gold master image and deploy it as a test.

Once you’re ready (don’t forget to perform any reboots Windows updates wants you to do), open the deployment share of your server.  \\dc\deploymentshare$

Enter your domain account details.

Find the scripts folder.

Run the LiteTouch.vbs script  (note that you want .VBS,  not .WSF) (again enter your credentials).

Select Capture Windows 8.1 task sequence.

Review and complete the wizard.

Your machine will be sys-prepped and captured.

 

Once your GOLD MASTER has been captured, you’ll need to add that into the WDS / MDT software.

Go back to MDT 2013

Right click on the Windows 8.1 Deployment Share and select properties.

Select the Rules tab

In the rules tab, delete the capture rules (or indeed copy to a text file on your desktop for next time!)

Enter the deployment rules below:

 

[Settings]

Priority=Default

Properties=MyCustomProperty

 

[Default]

OSInstall=Y

SkipBDDWelcome=YES

SkipCapture=NO

_SMSTSORGNAME= 

SkipAdminPassword=YES

SkipProductKey=YES

SkipComputerBackup=NO

SkipApplications=YES

SkipAppsOnUpgrade=YES

SkipBitLocker=YES

SkipCapture=YES

SkipComputerName=YES

SkipComputerBackup=NO

ComputerBackupLocation=AUTO

SkipDeploymentType=NO

SkipDomainMembership=YES

JoinDomain=demo

DomainAdmin=OS.Rollout

DomainAdminPassword=Pa$$w0rd1

MachineObjectOU=OU=Computers_Deployed,DC=demo,DC=local

SkipFinalSummary=NO

SkipLocaleSelection=YES

KeyboardLocale=en-GB

UserLocale=en-GB

UILanguage=en-GB

SkipPackageDisplay=YES

SkipSummary=NO

SkipTaskSequence=YES

TaskSequenceID=1

SkipTimeZone=YES

SkipUserData=YES

UserDataLocation=AUTO

TimeZoneName=GMT Standard Time

 

 

 Select operating systems and choose import operating system.

 

Your newly captured GOLD MASTER is kept in the captures folder.

 

Once complete; go to Task sequences, right click and select new task sequence.

Create a new standard client task sequence

Give it an ID and call it Windows 8.1 GOLD MASTER, or something similar

 

If your skipping the task sequence selection screen, make sure you’re changed the script to reflect that!

Select the new GOLD MASTER wim image you’ve just imported (if it doesn’t appear you might not have used .wim as the file extension name – manually rename it from the captures folder).

Run through the final steps that should now be familiar to you.

 

Right click on the deployment share and select Update Deployment Share

Select optimise and compress.

 

Once that’s complete, go back to Windows Deployment Services and select your existing boot image.  Right click and replace.  Give it the exact same name, choose your LiteTouch .iso.

Finally, create a new VM.  Boot to the PXE server and select your GOLD MASTER image to deploy.

Make sure the VM deploys as expected.

 

Congratulations!  You have successfully built your own deployment server, and have created a gold master image of which to deploy to your workstations.

This is the final article in this series ,  though I have added part 12 which includes links to some articles I found useful.

 

What’s next?

Whilst this series is done,  In a possible future series, I may explore:

• Injecting hardware specific drivers
• Configuring and updating Dell Bios’s
• Using WSUS to patch Windows during the install
• Deploying Office via group policy
• User State Migration
• Windows 10 deployment