One of the first challenges I faced upon accepting this job was learning how to image hundreds of computers in a timely fashion. The problem was that our district hadn’t (and still hasn’t!) switched from XP to Windows 7 for all student machines, yet they requested Windows 7 be installed. As a result, there weren’t many people around for me to turn to for help, and I used a very tedious method of deploying our “golden image” in the first go-round.
This basically involved installing Windows 7 and all of the necessary software to one machine, running every possible software/system update and then “sysprepping” and capturing this image to a USB stick. At this early phase I didn’t even know how to create a custom unattend.xml file, so on each install I had to actually click through several screens and set up the partitions, etc. I set up 8 laptops, connected my 8 flash drives and went from machine to machine installing our image. This took several days of mindlessly repeating the same task!
I knew there had to be a better way, but with a deadline fast approaching and few people to turn to I didn’t have any choice but to get the machines ready ASAP. When I finished I had a little lull and was able to research and play with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 and the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK). From the very beginning, it was obvious that these tools were going to make my life a ton easier – because although we didn’t have a server available for imaging at our school, we did have a machine in my room, and by running the Microsoft Deployment Workbench (part of the MDT) I’d be able to set up nearly fully unattended installs!
In my next post I’ll explain how I did this. If you have any suggestions on a better way to do this, please leave me a comment below. Just keep in mind that I don’t have a server to use here…
