lbhans

Greetings, I am having some difficulties in deploying Windows 2008 R2 SP1 from a VmWare template. I created a blank VM in vSphere 4.1 U1 and installed W2L8R2 to it with no problem. The problem arises when I deploy the template to a new VM. None of the prior customizations I made to the image translate to the VMs I deploy to. Only added roles and features are carried over. I renamed the Administrator account and it did not translate to the new VMs I suspect that it is because SYSPREP strips out all uniquness. I tried creating a setupcomplete.cmd file with the following line added to it wmic useraccount where name="Administrator" call rename name="NewAdmin" The setupcomplete.cmd is supposed to run after the Sysprep operations complete and before the server reboots, but this does not seem to work. I also tried going into the Local Securoty Policy view in Administrative Tools and setting a policy to rename the Administratoe account to one f my choosing. This setting was also stripped after SYSPREP ran. Any insight into a possible solution would be most appreciated. Thanks!!

If you just want to Sysprep and Capture an image that you have built manually and tweaked, you have to have the machine that you built up and running. Then map to the deployment share in MDT. There is a scripts folder that has a file called LiteTouch.vbs. If you run this file, it will bring up the same GUI as when you boot from the PE media and allow you to run task sequences from the deployment share. Assuming that you have already set up a task sequence for Sysprep and Capture, just run the sequence and sysprep should run, reboot the machine back into the PE environment and capture the image. After the capture, the image should appear as a WIM in the Captures folder in the deployment share. I didn't see this in any MDT documentation. The process is rather time consuming because I have no yet discovered how to tweak the NIC driver to force a 1000/Full connection. Hope this helps L

If you just want to Sysprep and Capture an image that you have built manually and tweaked, you have to have the machine that you built up and running. Then map to the deployment share in MDT. There is a scripts folder that has a file called LiteTouch.vbs. If you run this file, it will bring up the same GUI as when you boot from the PE media and allow you to run task sequences from the deployment share. Assuming that you have already set up a task sequence for Sysprep and Capture, just run the sequence and sysprep should run, reboot the machine back into the PE environment and capture the image. After the capture, the image should appear as a WIM in the Captures folder in the deployment share. I didn't see this in any MDT documentation. The process is rather time consuming because I have no yet discovered how to tweak the NIC driver to force a 1000/Full connection. Hope this helps L

If you just want to Sysprep and Capture an image that you have built manually and tweaked, you have to have the machine that you built up and running. Then map to the deployment share in MDT. There is a scripts folder that has a file called LiteTouch.vbs. If you run this file, it will bring up the same GUI as when you boot from the PE media and allow you to run task sequences from the deployment share. Assuming that you have already set up a task sequence for Sysprep and Capture, just run the sequence and sysprep should run, reboot the machine back into the PE environment and capture the image. After the capture, the image should appear as a WIM in the Captures folder in the deployment share. I didn't see this in any MDT documentation. The process is rather time consuming because I have no yet discovered how to tweak the NIC driver to force a 1000/Full connection. Hope this helps L