I’ve been working on trying to get some new machines deployed and some old machine’s refreshed with newer software for the past couple of days. I’ve been deploying both Vista and XP using MDT. I learned a few tricks that I want to pass along to everyone.

Deploying XP is best when you copy the source files to the Operating Systems section. I had syspreped a machine image, booted into PE and then used ImageX to make the wim file, but what was happening was when you redeployed it, the machine would get into a boot loop and never boot up. It was the same hardware that the image was created on so I know it wasn't a HAL issue.

By copying over the source files, the machine will build itself from scratch, so you need to find sources for all the programs you intend to install. Luckily for me, everything I want to install is available as a silent install msi package. Adobe products are available for redeployment, you just need to request the files which was something I found out a couple of months back. Live messenger I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to do that one, but luckily I found an MSI file for messenger 8.5. I still have a few bugs to iron out of the XP build as I just got it working this past afternoon, but it is coming along great.

Vista installs are going good as well. One of the tricks I found last night was how to get games to install for Vista Business. By default, the games are off, but these machines are for the library, so I have to install them. Creating an application install for MDT with the following command line does the trick which is better then going into Control Panel and finding the install Windows components.

Command line: pkgmgr.exe /iu:InboxGames /quiet

I pretty much have the computers to the point where I just login the patron account, ensure it looks okay, check and make sure everything is working, then turn on disk protection in SteadyState.