A few weeks ago I posted about some of the tools Microsoft provides to help establish the costs and saving that deploying Vista can bring. One of the issues that I have is how do we get the numbers to fill in those forms; well MS has you covered there too. This tool is really useful.

With the MS Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator you can scan the computers in your network for information such as which OS and Service pack they are running, and if they are good candidates to upgrade to Vista. There are even some tools geared towards migrating your servers to 2008, and qualifying workloads that are good for virtualization. You can also generate some really nifty reports. These reports save a ton of time, and can help in presenting information to the managers in your life. In short this tool was designed with lazy admins in mind!

Note: When you install MS APSA you also need to install SQL server, and the installer will automatically download and install it for you during the installation. You also need a copy of Word 2007 and Excel 2007 for document generation.

The Microsoft Assessment and

Microsoft has released a patch 1 for BDD 2007. This patch fixes a bunch of bugs. (I’m not sure if it fixed the XP partition bug that I mention in my earlier guides, I’ll find out in the next few days as I test it out.)

Update 07/09/2007: After testing you still need to use the workaround found in Building a Windows XP Image in BDD 2007 Part 1

You can get the patch here:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=937191

The link also provides additional information on what has been fixed. 

I have had a lot of people ask me about capturing a custom image manually using ImageX. First before I go into details on how to do this let me just point out a few things first.

1) You can use the process we went through previously to recapture a custom iteratively. Meaning you can slowly build up your image as you like using the custom tasks in the builds node to perform customer installs of customizations.

2) If you choose to manually customize an image make sure that you run sysprep, or use a utility like newsid to generalize the install before joining it to a domain or network. Note: Microsoft PSS does not support using New Sid so really you should use Sysprep to generalize your image.

Note: Generalizing an image means removing data about the Windows install that makes it unique. Usually this means removing the SID, and the name of the computer. The most important element here is the SID you really don’t want to machines with the same SID living in your network

The first thing we need to do before capturing our image is get a generic version of WinPE up and running on our

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BDD allows you to automate the installation of base applications as part of the image building or deployment process.

This is really useful if your company can’t afford an application management suite like SMS or Alteris. This functionality is also helpful if you want to automate the way a base application is installed in your image (for instance Microsoft Office).

To add an application into your build/deployment process click the Distribution Share->Applications branch. In the actions pane click “New” This will start the new Applications Wizard.

We will setup Adobe Acrobat Reader 8. This application is pretty common on most corporate installs. For this install we will choose the first installation option “Application with source files”. This will allow us to specify an application that is installed from an installer package. If we wanted to install an application that is launched form a shortcut. (network installed apps) we can use the second option seen in the following image.

Next select a folder where the necessary installation source files are stored. Make sure you have all the necessary installation files needed to install the application. in the root of the folder you choose. Some applications will have a more complex

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This post will go over adding an XP WIM image to your BDD 2007 server and installing XP from a WIM based build.

First make sure that your Windows XP was properly installed.

BDD will bring your through the basic install launched from the GUI.

Next you will see the text based installation: 

Finally the GUI setup portion will commence.

BDD Light touch wizard will execute the tasks specified in the build Tasks tab.

Sysprep will run on the workstation once all the tasks are completed. This may take a while. Also I have noticed a small bug where you sometimes have to manually set the current window context to the System Management Server dialog box. If you notice it’s taking a long really long time (30 minutes +) Just click in the Window.

The computer will then reboot into WinPE and capture the image to the capture share on the BDD server.

If you open the Distribution folder on your BDD server and browse to Captures you can see the newly created WIM Image.

Many people are interested in the utilities and features offered in Windows Vista deployment tools. They are also very interested in the new BDD framework. What many people don’t realize is that you can use many of the Vista deployment tools to manage and configure Windows XP images.

The following guide will get you on your way to automated greatness of BDD.

The first thing you need to do is copy the OS files into the BDD infrastructure.

To do this open the BDD workbench MMC.

Next click on “Operating Systems” and click “New” in the Actions Pane.

In the wizard choose “Full set of source Files” and Click next.

Insert the Windows XP SP2 CD or mount an ISO image on your BDD server. Browse to the appropriate drive and select it. Click Next

Type in the name you wish to use for the directory and click copy.

The operation to copy all the files will take a few minutes you’ll see a progress bar similar to the following:

This is actually just copying the source files into a directory in your distribution share. You can see the folder if you open

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