Do you hear that? It’s the sound of the clock ticking down on Windows XP SP3. Yes my fellow System Administrators and Geeks alike, support for Windows XP SP3 is going to be killed off in April 2014. Time to start thinking about rolling out Windows 7 with SP1. I understand that a lot of companies are still running Windows XP SP3, but for those of you ready to make the leap to Windows 7, this guide will help you deploy Windows 7 quickly and smoothly throughout your organization.
Phase 1: TESTING!!! I cannot stress how important this is. You need to install Windows 7 SP1 on one of your systems first, and then install EVERY application that your organization uses. Test, Test and Re-Test until you’ve ensured that everything will work properly. You don’t want to be in the situation where you roll it out to all PC’s, and then realize you have to roll back to XP because of 1 unsupported critical application.
Phase 2: Decide your Roll-Out Strategy. This is really based on your comfort level, and what type of license agreement you have. If you are like me and don’t have an Enterprise Agreement that will allow you to roll out Windows 7 to every system in your organization, then the “All new systems moving forward will have Windows 7″ approach may be best for you.
Phase 3: Once you’ve verified you are 100% Windows 7 compatible, and you’ve decided your roll-out strategy, it’s now time to create your first Windows 7 Image. Windows 7 deployment is quite different from Windows XP. Gone are the days where we can create a system image, run Norton Ghost, and boot the systems off a GhostCast server. Reading through the Windows 7 deployment setup guide can be quite over-whelming, but it’s really not as hard as they make it seem. Here’s the barebone steps in plain english.
1) To begin, you will need 2 Windows 7 PC’s. PC1 will be the deployment PC which we will configure all the tools using. PC2 is the PC we will create the image based on. In addition to that, you will need 2 USB Keys or 2 USB hard drives that are at least 10GB. We’ll call these USB1 and USB2.
Install Windows 7 on BOTH computers. Keep in mind you will need to install Windows 7 using Corporate Windows 7 Media. Vendor restore DVD’s will NOT work.
2) Lets start with PC1. After you’ve installed Windows 7 and all the necessary drivers, download the Windows Automated Install Kit (WAIK) from Microsoft. You can download it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5753
3) Burn the WAIK ISO or extract it and run the install.
4) Plug in USB1. We are now going to create the PE (Pre-boot Environment Disk). For this exercise we will be creating a 32-Bit Windows image. Run the “Deployment Tools Command Prompt” application under Start, Programs, Microsoft Windows AIK.
5) Type the command: copy “C:Program FilesWindows AIKToolsx86ImageX.exe” C:winpe_x86ISO
6) In the Deployment Tools Command Prompt, type “Diskpart” and press enter.
Type “list disk” and press enter, and look for your USB flash drive.
Type “select disk x” where x is the disk number your USB Flash Drive is registered with.
Type “Clean” and press enter.
Type “Create Primary Partition 1″ and press enter.
Type “select partition 1″ and press enter.
Type “format fs=ntfs quick” and press enter.
type “active” and press enter
type “exit” to quit the Diskpart Utility.
Now, we will copy the Pre-Environment to the USB Flash Drive. In the Deployment Tools command prompt Window, type “xcopy /s C:winpe_x86iso*.* D:”
This will now create the Pre-Environment Flash Drive.
7) Now switch to PC2, the system you want to create the image based on. Install all your applications, updates, and setup all custom settings. After you’ve created the image exactly how you want it, Click Start and type “C:WindowsSystem32sysprepsysprep.exe”
8) The System preparation Tool will appear. Select “Enter System Audit Mode” from the System Cleanup Action Drop down, if this image will be used on multiple different hardware platforms, click “Generalize”, otherwise leave it unchecked if you will be deploying it on the same machine model with the same hardware configuration. Select “Reboot” from the Shutdown Options drop down, and click OK. The system will now reboot and login to Audit Mode.
9) This is your last chance to make any other changes to the system. If you are happy with your image, go back to the “System preparation Tool” by clicking start, and typing “C:WindowsSystem32sysprepsysprep.exe”. This time select “Enter System Out-Of-Box Experience (OOBE) from the System Cleanup Action drop down, leave Generalize unchecked if you will be deploying to the same hardware configuration, and select “Shut Down” from the Shutdown Options drop down menu.
10) Now, using the USB1 (Pre-Environment) USB key we just created in Step 4-6, plug this USB key in to PC2 (the system you want to create the image from) and boot from the USB key. The system will boot in to the Pre-Environment and from here we will now create the image.
11) Using the command prompt, we now need to find which drive letter was assigned to the Pre-Environment Key. Type DIR E: and look for the imageX.exe application, if you cannot see it in the list of files, type DIR F:, DIR G:, until you find what drive letter the imageX.exe application corresponds to. In this example, we will assume it is on drive E:.
12) For Windows 7 Enterprise, type the following command and press enter:
E:imagex /compress fast /check /flags “Enterprise” /capture D: E:install.wim “Windows 7 Enterprise” “Windows 7 Enterprise Custom”
For Windows 7 Professional, type the following command and press enter:
E:imagex /compress fast /check /flags “Professional” /capture D: E:install.wim “Windows 7 Professional” “Windows 7 Professional Custom”
The Image creation will begin, and it will create a file called “install.wim”. Go out and grab a coffee, this could take a while.
13) Once the image is created, go back to PC1, your Deployment PC, and insert USB2 (This will be the Windows 7 Media flash drive), and also your Windows 7 Corporate DVD in to the DVD-ROM drive.
14) Start the Windows Deployment Tools application, and type in the command “diskpart” and press enter.
Type “list disk” and press enter. Look for what disk number your USB flash drive is registered to.
Type “select disk x” Where X is the disk number registered to the Flash Drive.
Type “clean” and press enter
Type “create partition primary” and press enter.
Type “select partition 1″ and press enter.
type “format fs=ntfs quick” and press enter.
Type “active” and press enter
Type “exit” and press enter to close the diskpart utility.
Now, in the Deployment Tools Command Prompt window, type in the command “xcopy /s D:*.* E:*.*,*” where D: is your DVD drive letter, and E: is the USB Flash Drive letter.
15) After the file copy is complete, open the Sources folder in USB2, and delete the “install.wim” file. Copy the install.wim file from USB1 (the Pre-Environment Key) to USB 2 under the Sources Folder.
16) You’ve now just created your custom Windows 7 Image. You can take this USB key (USB2) to any similar system, boot off the USB key, and follow through the install. It will appear as though you are installing the same old Generic Windows 7, however after the final reboot, you will see that all of your custom applications and settings are now applied. For the most part, I’ve had success installing the same image on different models of HP hardware and just install the drivers manually. The only issue I ran in to was when deploying it on a different generation of hardware. IE, loading an image that was created on a first generation i5 CPU on to a system running the 2nd Generation i5 CPU.
Written By: Amardeep Juneja