In courses 5119 and 5105 they keep on talking about the different ways of deploying Vista images. Either by DVD or by Network share or by USB.
Taking into respect that your images will be several GB big, even in compressed state, USB sounds like a good alternative when using unswitched networks or slow 10/100 MB ones.
If you're not using PXE and SMS to push out the images you will need a version of Windows PE to help along the way. Now I'm a minimalist and hate having a CD with PE and a USB disk with my image. Why not have it both on the usb and boot from it directly?
Before you embark on that journey keep in mind that not all computers boot from USB! So make sure your environment is going to support your new deployment mechanism! Otherwise many hours will be going down the drain as your great and fancy bootable drive will never get used!
Before you go around all the forums and create a bootable usb disk with HP tools and windows 98 remember that you have the power of Vista at your finger tips. Well, should have! The new version of DiskPart that comes with the AIK detects usb flash disks and usb hard disks as if they were fixed disks. Thus you can clean them, repartition them, set them to active and format them with your desired FileSystem (NTFS). Once prepped all you need to do is copy the contents of your favourite WinPE ISO or WinRE ISO (see post from yesterday) onto the disk and you're up and running.
VistaPC Guy has a great step by step article on putting WinPE on your usb. read it here:
http://www.vistapcguy.net/?p=71
Showing posts with label 5119. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5119. Show all posts
Friday, April 4, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
5119 Supporting Vista Lab 4 using VPC
If any of you have been prepping 5119 you might have tried and tried and tried to get lab 4 running just like me. But no matter what you do, the GPO settings are not pushed out to the computer. Even removing the PC fromt he domain and rejoining it had no effect.
This seems to be a problem with Virtual PC. Out of some annoying reason, VPC insists on controlling the clock of your vpcs. Thus, the vista machine is not properly synchronised with the domain controller and refuses to apply the group policy object as it is unsure about the computers compliance to the GPO rules.
I presume using Virtual Server, as advised by the course authors would solve the problem.
How to fix it:
In my case it was as simple as making sure that both domain controller and vista machine were using the same time zone and both ignored daylight savings. Then both machines showed the same time.
For good measure I also included Domain Computers in the GPO Filter rule. To make sure that the rule does not apply only to users, but coputers too.
First reboot did not do it, but after the second reboot the startup took, as expected, forever and once the logon screen appeared I could log on and gradually could see the newly installed apps.
If that does not do the trick, here is a little cheat:
Remember: computer configuration is applied at boot time, while user configuration is applied at log in time.
first, put adrian into the Martketing OU, then when editing the GPO:
instead of using Computer Configuration >> Software Settings >> Software Installation, use
User Confiuguration >> Software Settings >> Software Installation instead.
That will make the icons appear on the start menu as soon as Adrian logs into the target machine. This way the programs are not installed, but get installed on first use.
Ok, the install will complain that it is not configured for a per user install, but it at least demonstrates the point.
This seems to be a problem with Virtual PC. Out of some annoying reason, VPC insists on controlling the clock of your vpcs. Thus, the vista machine is not properly synchronised with the domain controller and refuses to apply the group policy object as it is unsure about the computers compliance to the GPO rules.
I presume using Virtual Server, as advised by the course authors would solve the problem.
How to fix it:
In my case it was as simple as making sure that both domain controller and vista machine were using the same time zone and both ignored daylight savings. Then both machines showed the same time.
For good measure I also included Domain Computers in the GPO Filter rule. To make sure that the rule does not apply only to users, but coputers too.
First reboot did not do it, but after the second reboot the startup took, as expected, forever and once the logon screen appeared I could log on and gradually could see the newly installed apps.
If that does not do the trick, here is a little cheat:
Remember: computer configuration is applied at boot time, while user configuration is applied at log in time.
first, put adrian into the Martketing OU, then when editing the GPO:
instead of using Computer Configuration >> Software Settings >> Software Installation, use
User Confiuguration >> Software Settings >> Software Installation instead.
That will make the icons appear on the start menu as soon as Adrian logs into the target machine. This way the programs are not installed, but get installed on first use.
Ok, the install will complain that it is not configured for a per user install, but it at least demonstrates the point.
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