Month: July 2010

A student asked whether he can have multiple WDS server on the same network, actually: You can have multiple Windows Server 2008 WDS servers on the network. However, you will not have an option to choose which WDS server you would like to connect. When PXE booting from a client, The first WDS server who responds to it will server this client. If you would like to manually set which WDS server will serve a client, you can prestage the client, update IP helper or use DHCP options. For more information, you can refer to the following articles: Windows Deployment … Continue reading Multiple WDS server on the same network?

A student asked how can he know which machines were deployed with WDS, after some searching, I found this: If you use WDS to deploy OS, after you install a computer via the WDS server (you may need to configure the policy so that computers can be automatically joined into your domain),the computer account will contain an attribute indicating that it is installed via a WDS server, the netbootGUID. If this attribute is not empty, this usually means that, this machine is installed via the network (and in your environment it is the WDS server). So, you can write a script … Continue reading Finding WDS deployed client?

If the multicasting is very slow, you can check the following two settings to see which impacts the performance:  1.    Network Profile on the Network Settings tab of the WDS server properties. However, this relates to the physical network adapters and cables. 2.    The lowest client machine. If you have more than one client machines joined in the multicast session, and if these machines have different hardware configurations, the speed will be impacted by the slowest one. You can take a look at the following article for more detailed information on this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754137(WS.10).aspx If these methods don’t change the performance, … Continue reading Troubleshooting WDS Multicast performance issue.

If you want to control your WDS server to respond to specific NIC card, you can: use WDSUTIL commands as follows: 1.    Open an elevated command prompt.2.    Run WDSUTIL /Set-Server /BindPolicy /Add /Address:<IP or MAC address> /AddressType:{IP|MAC} This adds the specified network interface to the list in the Registry. 3.    Run WDSUTIL /Set-Server /BindPolicy /Policy:Include This forces PXE provider to listen on these interfaces listed in the list. If you use “/Policy:Exlude” instead of “/Policy:Include “, then the interfaces in the list will be excluded. For more details about this, please refer to: How to Manage Your Server:http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/library/1415cf2d-99cf-46e5-8626-44141fdb56f91033.mspx?mfr=true

Microsoft have an article about how to automatically import a customized security template into a computer. Windows XP Security Guide:http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/prodtech/windowsxp/secwinxp/xpsgch05.mspx Those steps work on Windows Server 2008! So you can just follow it. Here are the main steps for your reference: 1.    Create a custom template using the MMC Security Templates snap-in, and save it to a folder.2.    Create a new security database associated with the security template you created in step 1, and save it to the same folder.3.    You can put this folder in the $OEM$\$1 on the WDS server, so that this folder can be copied to … Continue reading Configure Windows Server 2008 System Policy without the use of GPO

A student asked whether we can use a USB stick to deploy a WIM image to client PC, without the use of WDS.After some searching, I found the following method: 1) We should create bootable Windows PE on USB disk 2) Use sysprep tool to prepare install.wim and copy it to USB disk3) Customize a script used in a Windows PE Image to realize the automatic deployment. I assume you have successfully completed the step 1 and 2. I will mainly focus on step 3. Windows PE provides three methods for launching custom scripts: Winpeshl.ini, Startnet.cmd, and Unattend.xml. We can … Continue reading Use USB to deploy WIM

If you want to add OEM logo to the properties page of “My Computer” in WIndows Server 2008, you can:  1.    Open regedit and goto: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OEMInformation You may need to manually create this key if it doesn’t exist. 2.    Right-click this key and in right-side pane, create the following string values and set their values as shown below: Logo – path_of_OEMlogo.bmp_fileManufacturer – Any_desired_nameModel – Any_desired_nameSupportHours – Any_desired_time_amount_like_24x7SupportPhone – Any_desired_phone_numberSupportURL – Any_desired_URL NOTE: OEMlogo.bmp file should be 96×96 in size and can be placed at any location.  3.    Open System Properties (may need rebooting) by right-clicking on My Computer icon on … Continue reading Adding OEM logo to Windows Server 2008

Microsoft have an article giving the detailed information about how to install a language pack to an offline image. Install a Language Pack to an Offline Image:http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsvista/es/library/2d7ae7cb-2054-452d-a669-e766782701853082.mspx?mfr=true Here are some major steps: 1.    Install Windows AIK with the default settings. Then you can use some command-line tools such as “imagex” by clicking “Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Windows AIK -> Windows PE Tools Command Prompt”, and you can use Windows System Image Manager by clicking ” Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Windows AIK -> Windows System Image Manager”. 2.    Create an answer file that contain ” <source location=”C:\LPs\fr-FR\lp.cab” … Continue reading Adding Language Pack to offline image

Here is a brief introduction on the deployment service in Windows Server 2008: Generally speaking, we can divide the deployment processes into two parts, generating an image and installing the image. How to generate an image:=================You can manually create an image (either syspreped image or images from the Setup media) that you want to deploy to computers, including some drivers, applications, packages and unattend answer file. You can use some tools such as imagex and pkgmgr (included in Windows AIK) to modify the image. If you think that modification of the image is much complicated, well, you can try the … Continue reading Overview on Windows Deployment in Windows 2008

The Microsoft Web Deployment Tool (MS Deploy) is a utility that you can use to migrate your Web server or Web site from a computer that is running Information Services (IIS) version 6.0 on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to a computer that is running IIS 7.0 on Windows Server 2008. You can find more detail of the tool in here: http://www.iis.net/download/webdeployhttp://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd569059(WS.10).aspx