Windows 7 Deployment training – Course 6294: Planning and Managing Windows 7 Desktop Deployments and Environments

2011-04-19 Leave a comment

Windows 7 deployment seems to the the hot topic these days. If you are responsible for planning and rolling out Windows 7, then this is a course you really should consider taking. This five-day instructor-led course is intended for desktop administrators who specialize in desktop deployment, configuration, and management . It is a great course for those interested in OS deployment.

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Windows 7 Deployment Using MDT . . . But Were Afraid To Ask

2011-04-19 Leave a comment

I find that one the the most common areas where clients tend to have questions – both in the classroom and when working at client sites – is related to automating the deployment of Windows 7. Everyone has questions about WAIK, MDT, and SCCM integration. Read more of this post

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Demystifying USMT Hard Link Migration

2010-10-22 Leave a comment

It was a bit tough to wrap my head around the whole concept of hard link migration in USMT. In the past, if I wanted to re-image a user’s machine, I needed to safeguard all the user’s precious data first. I might store their documents on a network server, or removable storage. Once I’d done that, I would rebuild their machine, and then restore the user data from it’s temporary vault. Problem was, all this data transfer took time. If the user had a lot of local data, it could take a very long time. Read more of this post

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Have you tried the WIM2VHD tool?

2010-10-01 Leave a comment

WIM2VHD is a tool that will create a bootable VHD from a Windows 7 or 2008 R2 WIM image without having to run Windows Setup. Read more of this post

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Don’t forget the log files!

2010-08-26 Leave a comment

Configuration Manager provides remarkable troubleshooting log files. Both Configuration Manager servers and Configuration Manager clients log pretty much everything they do, and these log files are a wealth of troubleshooting information. Microsoft maintains a complete List of Log File in Configuration Manager at their technet site. I’ll be posting more about log files soon.

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OSD Imaging from a Web Page

2010-08-23 Leave a comment

Was reading a great how-to article today on Steve Rachui’s Manageability blog.  It’s a sample proof of concept only, you would have to tweak it to work the way you want it to, but it has some great potential. Why would you want to drive imaging from the command line? One compelling reason – you don’t want the team responsible for delivering image to have access to the SCCM Console. Users could visit a web page to have an OSD image delivered. Very cool!

You’ll find the whole article at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/steverac/archive/2010/08/23/os-imaging-via-web-page.aspx.

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