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Tag Archives: MDT

Giveaway – Stealing with Pride, Vol. 1: Advanced OSD Customizations for MDT 2013 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2

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DeployHappiness just hit 1000 subscribers! To celebrate, all-around genius and deployment guru Johan Arwidmark has donated a copy of his latest book to one reader of this blog!

Stealing with Pride, Vol. 1: Advanced OSD Customizations for MDT 2013 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2 is the ultimate guide for customizing your environment and taking your OS deployment to a whole new level! It includes detailed instructions on numerous customizations and scripts that you can immediately use.

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It makes the perfect companion to his previous book, Deployment Fundamentals, Vol. 5. This great resource includes step-by-step guides on setting up a completely automated deployment solution with MDT 2013.

But enough talking – let’s get to the giveaway:

Prize: A copy of Stealing with Pride, Vol. 1: Advanced OSD Customizations for MDT 2013 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2

How to Enter: Leave a short comment on this post related to OS deployment. Describe how you currently deploy, how you would like to deploy, an issue you have, etc. When submitting your comment, be sure to include your name and email. If you win, I need a way to contact you!

A random email will be selected (by using PowerShell) on Jan 6th 2015. The winning person will be contacted by email – their name will be added to this post.

And the Winner is: Brian Gladfelter (Tennessee, USA). Thanks to everyone who entered and a huge thank you to Johan for the book donation.

 

Automating Display Resolution Configuration in MDT

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This is a guest post by Kyle Beckman of Trekker.net. Kyle works as a systems administrator in Higher Education near Atlanta, GA.

Whenever I’m deploying Operating Systems to computers using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), I always try to automate everything that can be automated. Any time I have to do something by hand, I’m using my time (that could possibly be spent on other things) and introducing the potential for human error.

Automatically Configure Screen Resolution

One of the quickest, easiest things you can automate in MDT is configuring screen resolution. By default, MDT automatically uses 1024×768 as the screen resolution for deployments. How many devices do you have that actually need that low of a screen resolution? I checked… I don’t have any physical devices that use a resolution that low.

To configure this setting during OS deployment, we can use the XResolution and YResolution settings in the CustomSettings.ini file located in $YourDeploymentShare\Control\CustomSettings.ini. Rather than setting these to typical screen resolutions, we can set them both to “1” so that Windows detects the screen resolution of the computer:

 

[Settings]

Priority=Default 

[Default] 

XResolution=1 
YResolution=1

 

 

Windows Experience Index

If you’re still deploying Windows 7 (and most of us still are), you also have to deal with Windows Aero and the Windows Experience Index. Most systems default to the Windows 7 Basic Theme at OS deploy time and need the Windows System Assessment to generate the Experience Index to enable Aero and the “glass” theme most people are used to using in Windows 7.

System rating is not available on Windows 7

Fortunately, there’s a command line utility, winsat.exe, that we can use to run the Windows System Assessment during OS deploy time. I’ve tried running the “winsat formal” command several different ways; but, I’ve found that just using a simple batch file seems to consistently work the best for me.

First, we’ll need to create a text file named Generate_Windows_Experience_Index.bat with the following in it:

echo off winsat formal exit 0

Generate Windows Experience Index Batch File in Notepad

Next, add this batch file as an application on your MDT server (hopefully you’ve done that before!). I also like to set the “Hide this application in the Deployment Wizard” since we’re going to have it run automatically when the OS deployment process runs.

Go to your Windows 7 Task Sequence and edit the Properties. Next, go to the State Restore section. Click Add > General > Install Application to add the script to the Task Sequence. Change the name field and set the “Install a single application” option. Click Browse and choose the Generate Windows Experience Index script application that you just created. Use the Up and Down buttons to place the application after the “Install Applications” task or in the “Custom Tasks” folder. When you’re done, it should look something like this:

Install Application Added to Task Sequence

During your Windows 7 Task Sequence, you should see a Command Prompt open and run the Windows System Assessment Tool to generate the Windows Experience Index:

Windows System Assessment Tool Running

If we check the Computer Properties after the OS deploy finishes, we should have a fully generated Windows Experience Index:

Windows Experience Index Generated in Windows 7

How to Remotely PXE Boot a Computer

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You have your MDT task sequence perfected! All of your machines are configured in the MDT database. When you boot a machine into MDT, it looks up its name and images without any prompts. If only you didn’t have to physically PXE boot the computer! If only you had a way to remotely PXE boot a computer…

Remotely PXE Network Boot a Computer

Rethinking a PXE Boot

Your goal isn’t to PXE boot a computer; your goal is to set the onboard-NIC as the primary boot device. That small difference is so important! When a machine is online, changing the boot order this way will allow it to boot into a MDT task sequence the next time it starts up. This post will focus on remotely PXE booting a Dell computer. This same concept can be applied to any make/model that allows you to edit the boot order.

Your first step is to build a BIOS settings package that sets the onboard-NIC as the primary boot device. If you haven’t made a BIOS package yet, this guide covers the steps in detail. Download and install the Dell Client Configuration Toolkit. The download can be found here.

Launch the Client Configuration Toolkit, select Create Package, and choose Multi-Platform file. In the boot management section, double click on bootorder. Select View/Change – Edit – Add Device. Your first device should be the embedded NIC with a Device Instance of 0. The second device should be the Hard Disk with a Device Instance of 1.

Remotely PXE Network Boot a Computer

Save the boot order and export the configuration as an EXE. If your machines contain a BIOS password, specify it now. Copy this EXE to a network share.

 

Running a Batch File Remotely

Now we need to create a batch file to execute this package on remote machines. We will be using the PSTools suite. A download can be found under the Desktop Management section here.

Copy the psexec and psshutdown tools to the root pf your local profile. Create a new batch file in the same folder. Paste in the following:

xcopy "\\SERVER\SHARE\Dell\forcepxe.exe" "\\%1\\C$\Users\Public\"
psexec \\%1 -u DOMAIN\USERNAME-p PASSWORD -h "C:\Users\Public\forcepxe.exe"

psshutdown.exe -r -t 60-c -m "This computer has been scheduled for a remote image. If you would like to delay this process, please select cancel" \\%1

pause

You will need to edit the xcopy path to point to your BIOS settings EXE. You will also need to specify credentials for the psexec line. The user specified needs to be an admin on the remote machine. You can now run this script from the run box.  I named my batch file forcepxe.bat. By pressing WIN + R, I can simply type forcepxe REMOTECOMPUTERNAME to run this script.

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Remotely PXE Network Boot a Computer

In the script output, you should see that the BIOS package successfully copied and executed on the remote machine. The machine will pause for 60 seconds to allow a user to cancel the reboot. After a minute, it will restart and boot off of the NIC! Pretty awesome right? One problem though – we are now stuck in an endless loop. The machine will install the OS and reboot back into a MDT task sequence. On the bright side, you don’t need deepfreeze anymore. 🙂

In our next post, we will edit our task sequence to prevent this endless loop by changing the boot sequence in Windows PE. Do you have another way of PXE booting a remote machine? What hurdles prevent you from getting to a Zero Touch image?

Removing Duplicate Computers From Your MDT Database

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If you are using MDT, I highly recommend using the MDT database to streamline your imaging process. Back in November, we covered a method to automatically import computers from Active Directory into your MDT database. This script has one drawback. It can accidently create duplicate entries if you physically move your computers around.

Like most global issues, PowerShell can fix this! The script below can help you by removing duplicate computers form your MDT database. You will need the MDT PowerShell module for this script to run. You can either import it within the script (line 1) or have it import in your PowerShell profile. I prefer the PowerShell profile route.

Import-Module –name ".\MDTDB.psm1"

Connect-MDTDatabase –sqlServer MDTDATABASE.Test.local –database MDT

#Remove Old Duplicate Entries
$MDTComputers = Get-MDTComputer | sort id

foreach ($MDTComputer in $MDTComputers){
$SerialNumber = Get-MDTComputer -serialNumber $MDTComputer.SerialNumber
$AssetTag = Get-MDTComputer -assetTag $MDTComputer.AssetTag

if (($SerialNumber).count -gt 1 -and $MDTComputer.SerialNumber -ne ""){
write-host "Duplicate Serial Number Found:" $MDTComputer.AssetTag
Remove-MDTComputer -id $MDTComputer.ID
}

if (($AssetTag).count -gt 1 -and $MDTComputer.AssetTag -ne ""){
write-host "Duplicate Serial Number Found:" $MDTComputer.AssetTag
Remove-MDTComputer -id $MDTComputer.ID
}

if ((Get-QADComputer -Name $MDTComputer.AssetTag) -eq $Null){
write-host "No AD Account Found for " + $MDTComputer.AssetTag
Remove-MDTComputer -id $MDTComputer.ID
}

$MDTComputers = Get-MDTComputer | sort id

}
}}

You will need to edit the Connect-MDTDatabase line and plug in your MDT Database server name. Other than that, no configuration should be required. The script will cycle through your MDT database and remove duplicate IDs based on the AssetTag and the SerialNumber. If a duplicate item is found, it will assume that the older (lesser) ID is obsolete. It will remove that ID.

This script can be ran separately from your importing script or appended to the end of it. When your import script (and this script) are scheduled to run daily, any computer changes made in Active Directory will be updated in your MDT database! This makes imaging maintenance automated. If you have any issues (or comments), let me know!

Adding BIOS Updates to Your Imaging Process

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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Matt Robertson

I am quickly learning that there are multiple ways to achieve the desired result within MDT. I set out to add BIOS updates to my task sequence and found a few posts that walked you through this. The steps in this article got me most of the way but it needed tweaking. In this article, we will cover adding BIOS updates to your Task Sequence. These will only update if the BIOS does not have the latest version that you have downloaded!

Prework: Organizing Your BIOS Updates

I used the same basic setup that I learned from the link above. I created a folder under my Applications folder in my Deployment share, named Dell. Under the Dell folder, I created a folder for each model of computer we have.

Adding BIOS Updates to Your Imaging Process

Under each of these folders I download the latest BIOS update for the corresponding model. I then rename the executable BIOSUpdate.exe and create a .txt file named with the version to make sure I don’t get confused. An example is below:

Adding BIOS Updates to Your Imaging Process

Once this prework is done, open the Deployment Workbench and edit your task sequence as follows.

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