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
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