Friday 31 August 2012

Windows Installation With Windows Deployment Services(WDS)

After searching the net and coming accross many confusing walkthroughs on setting up WDS, i ploughed through and decided to give a straight forward and easy walkthrough on how to do it
I initially decided to do a writeup of  my experience installing Windows via WDS,
but i came upon this video that said it all, so i'm going to skip it all and post the video.


All i would add are links for the softwares required:
1. The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) - Largest file at 1.7GB
2. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit - 22MB
3. Windows installation CD/DVD

 Note: The installation shown in the video is for a dedicated system. After having problems trying to deploy multiple OS's to multiple systems with all drivers in one deployment share, the final solution was to have different shares for different system types. for instance, HP dx2000mt would have a deployment share with all OS's and drivers while HP dc7800p would have another deployment share with all OS's and drivers.
Another typical way is to have a default deployment share with only the OS installation, only problem is that you must have the network driver on hand to install once windows has finished installing on the target computer cos it would give you an error saying the 'deployment folder cannot be reached'. when this is given,do not cancel it, install teh network driver from a flash drive and once it is done, click ''retry". then the installation will continue and hopefully, finish with no other hiccups.

No comments:

Post a Comment