USING MICROSOFT WDS & MDT 2013 TO DEPLOY WINDOWS 8.1 PART 10

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Windows Deployment: Part 10: Create your gold master image & prep MDT & WDS for capture

 

The first step is to build your GOLD MASTER image. You should do this on a virtual machine (use Hyper-V or VMWare for this).  This will make sure you are not redeploying for example, Dell drivers and Dell specific software onto a HP client.

Tip: If you’re creating a “GOLD” master image for capture, then please make sure you use a virtual machine (not Virtual Box as it uses weird BIOS emulation!).

 

You could use your deployed OS in the previous section as the basis of your GOLD MASTER. However, the machine must NOT be joined to the domain.  Put it in workgroup mode!

Tip: If you prefer to build your gold master from a DVD or ISO of Windows 8, rather than the deployment task, you will likely need to change a script as per this documentation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2797676

 

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Using Microsoft WDS & MDT 2013 to deploy Windows 8.1 Part 9

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Windows Deployment, Part 9: Deploying a vanilla build of Windows 8.1

 

We are now going to complete our WDS setup by deploying a vanilla build of Windows 8.1.

I’ll cover capturing and deploying your Gold Master Image in a later post.

First, boot a computer with PXE. In this example, we are using a VM.

 

Boot the VM.

Press ENTER for network service boot (This would be F12 on a legacy machine).

pxe 1

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Using Microsoft WDS & MDT 2013 to deploy Windows 8.1 Part 7

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Windows Deployment, Part 7: Creating a Task Sequence

 

We’ll now create a task sequence,  you’ll see our freshly imported operating system available.

task 1

We now need to go over to Task Sequencer.

Right click and create new task sequence.

task 2

Complete the general settings page.

It is very important you remember the Task Sequence ID.  It doesn’t have to be numeric, and of course in advanced scenarios you may wish to string multiple sequences together.

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Using Microsoft WDS & MDT 2013 to deploy Windows 8.1 Part 3

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Windows Deployment, Part 3: Installing and Configuring WADK

We now need to install WADK (We’re concentrating on Windows 8.1 deployments (if you want to deploy Windows 7, you would need WAIK http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5753  – WAIK cannot coexist with WADK!)

Download WADK from: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30652 It is several GB in size (16-07-2015 – link updated to Windows 8.1 Update version of the WADK).

Get WADK for Windows 10 here

Run the adksetup installer (you’ll be given the option to download the full package for use on another computer – I recommend this).

Accept the default options.

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Using Microsoft WDS & MDT 2013 to deploy Windows 8.1 Part 1

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Windows Deployment, Part 1: Configuring the Deployment Environment

MDT2013Logo1

 

In this 12 part series,  I will give instructions on how to configure WDS and MDT 2013, and show you how to deploy Windows 8.1, and capture your Gold Master Image. The example is for demonstration purposes only, and is not a representation of Microsoft recommendations or best practices. This article also assumes you have a working knowledge of Windows server.   First of all, we are going to configure WDS and MDT 2013 on Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacentre (fully patched) in an Active Directory environment. Then we are going to deploy Windows 8.1 Enterprise x64 using Lite Touch.

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