1 Reply by avamk

(4 replies, posted in Windows 7 Discussion)

Ahsen wrote:
avamk wrote:
mr_smartepants wrote:

I would still recommend our SAD utility but you'd have to add a runonce key to the registry to execute SAD and then have the script nuke itself and all folders once completed.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Yes, adding a couple of runonce entries to my unattend.xml did the trick nicely on a test machine. The SAD utility was able to find and install the relevant drivers. Thanks!!

Can you post here the complete process, How you did it?

Sorry I'm no longer at that job, and it took me a while to unearth that old unattend.xml file. Looks like I added these things to the FirstLogonCommands section (just look at commands 3 and 4):

<FirstLogonCommands>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c del c:\windows\panther\unattend.xml</CommandLine>
                    <Order>1</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c del c:\unattend.xml</CommandLine>
                    <Order>2</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;C:\SDI\SDI_R104.exe /autoinstall /autoclose /license /norestorepnt &gt; C:\drivers_log.txt&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>3</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;rmdir /S /Q C:\SDI &gt;&gt; C:\drivers_log.txt&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>4</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;net user user /delete&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>5</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
                <SynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
                    <CommandLine>cmd /c &quot;net user Administrator /active:yes&quot;</CommandLine>
                    <Order>6</Order>
                </SynchronousCommand>
            </FirstLogonCommands>

The key are commands 3 and 4 in the list. Looks like I put all the driverpacks and the SAD utility into the image's C:\SDI folder, ran it with the "/autoinstall /autoclose /license /norestorepnt" switches, pumped the output into a log file (C:\drivers_log.txt), then deleted all the used files with command 4.

Hope this is still useful for you!

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2 Reply by avamk

(4 replies, posted in Windows 7 Discussion)

mr_smartepants wrote:

I would still recommend our SAD utility but you'd have to add a runonce key to the registry to execute SAD and then have the script nuke itself and all folders once completed.  Shouldn't be too hard.

Yes, adding a couple of runonce entries to my unattend.xml did the trick nicely on a test machine. The SAD utility was able to find and install the relevant drivers. Thanks!!

Go to forum: Windows 7 Discussion

3 Topic by avamk

(1 replies, posted in Universal Imaging)

Hello,

I installed a reference Windows XP system in a VirtualBox virtual machine, and with SAD was able to integrate DriverPacks into the deployment process. I was able to see during mini-setup that dp_Inst_tool.cmd was run (BTW, does it matter if I run dp_Inst_tool.cmd during the Run Once VS the Additional Commands stage?) and the relevant DriverPacks installing windows showed up. However, the test deployment of the sysprep-resealed image was also on a virtual machine.

When I used Symantec Ghost 11.5 to make an image of the system, and deployed it to a bare metal test machine, the OS would repeatedly reboot without even getting to the Windows logo screen. I described the issue here, and a response suggested that it is because lack of AHCI support in Windows XP, and that changing the bare metal system's BIOS setting to IDE should work. Even if this solves this issue, however, I don't want to have to manually change the BIOS settings in a bunch of my organisation's computers during deployment which would be a big hassle. Therefore I am wondering if there is a way to pre-load the relevant AHCI/SATA drivers into my Windows XP reference system in VirtualBox before running sysprep?

I know there is the Mass Storage DriverPack, and there is a checkbox for it in DriverPacks Base when running SAD using method 2. The problem is my current setup runs dp_Inst_tool.cmd *during* mini-setup, but the system wouldn't even boot and wouldn't reach mini-setup to begin with. So:

(1) I'd like to confirm that the Mass Storage DriverPack contains the relevant AHCI drivers I am looking for.

(2) Is there a way to pre-load/pre-install AHCI drivers into Windows XP in VirtualBox? If so, and if it can be done with DriverPacks, how do I do it? BTW, I found two posts (here and here) that shows how to install an AHCI driver in an existing Windows XP installation. But they are specific to the chipset of that machine, while I'd like to prepare a sysprepped image that can be deployed to different hardware that might have different AHCI chipsets (so this is where I am hoping DriverPacks might be able to help).

I confess I am very new to DriverPacks so I'd appreciate any specific suggestions you can give me. Thank you very much!

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4 Topic by avamk

(4 replies, posted in Windows 7 Discussion)

Hello,

After a few weeks of learning all this stuff from scratch, I've created a Windows 7 Professional image with sysprep (with the /generalize and /oobe options) for our organisation that can be easily deployed to many systems (I used the Windows System Image Manager to create the unattend.xml answer file). However, the last remaining problem is that the target computers vary greatly in their hardware composition.

Is it possible to download the DriverPacks I am interested in (such as LAN, Graphics A, etc.), add them to the reference image, and run sysprep in a way so that hardware detection and driver installation happens automatically (without user intervention) upon deployment and startup? I'd also love it to clean up after itself by removing all remaining files/unused drivers after deployment.

So far I've found a couple of guides that seems to show how to do this for Windows XP, but I can't seem to find one for Windows 7. Also (and I am not sure if I am even understanding the post correctly), mr_smartepants' SAD2 appears close to what I am looking for, but the included guide applies to adding DriverPacks to an installation disc, not a sysprepped image for deployment.

Does a guide for what I'd like to do exist? Or can someone give me some pointers for how to achieve it? Thanks!!!

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