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To Deploy a VHD to all domain PCs/ Laptops and set up for Native Boot?


crashnburn4u

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To Deploy a VHD to all domain PCs/ Laptops and set up for Native Boot?

Not sure if this will do better as a Discussion or Q&A (mods feel free to switch), but I need answers for the 4 parts. 

Win 2008 Domain, Mix of Win XP, 7, 8 Machines. Prefer Free/ Gratis ways or Trial/ Freemium also works. I have PDQ Deploy Free but not sure if it can help? Will Spiceworks or LANSweeper help or something else? Dont have SCCM or time to set it up. 
Have downloaded MDT but not started using it as yet. 

In General - Prerequisite Task?? : 

Part 1: 
- Terminal Services/ Remote Services are not enabled 

 - How can I enable them for access across the Domain so that I can log in as Domain\Admin for some night time tasks & cleanup activity? 
- And later Disable this to prevent misuse? 

Specific Task - 2 parts: 

Part 2: 
- One of these tasks is to drop a VHD (Mostly 7/8/10 based) to the C or D or E drive of the Machine, Set it up for Native Boot and run it to execute some stuff 
- Since most machines are GigE and dont have USB 3 I'd prefer to Broadcast/ Multicast/ Copy over the network - Preferably driven from Domain\Administrator side. 

Is there some smart way/ tool of doing this? Or do I have remotely log into each and create a shared folder/ drive to drop the VHD or broadcast/ multi cast it? 

Part 3: 
- When I do this for my own machine it's simpler: Either using BCDBOOT.EXE or EasyBCD at times. 
- I've also found some Powershell/ BAT script commands to invoke and call BCDBOOT to create the boot entry. But this is usually TUNED to a SPECIFIC PATH on my machine. 

In person task (maybe possible to minimize in Person by configuring some remote stuff) 

Part 4: 

PS: I'd prefer to do most part of this from MY MACHINE, except for the EVENTUAL NATIVE BOOT for which I will have to be there in PERSON (Unavoidable at Booting??). 

Or 

Maybe I can make the Boot entry default to the VHD, and ensure/ configure VHD such that the VHD has some "Remote Access" from my machine/ Admin? 

Thoughts/ suggestions on how I can do the various parts of the process (as much as possible from my desk). 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I don't know much about any of this, but here are my thoughts: (for part two at least)

You could create a network share and load your VHD to it then in group policy for your domain (i think it is under group policy its been a while) ad a custom script that starts on the "client systems" that will copy and configure as much as possible without you being in front of the system.

hope that helps 

Additional thought:

you could also use Windows Deployment Services to image the VHD's from a standard image I imagen you are using a lot of different hardware and one image might not fit all. 

Edited by helpdesk98
had additional thought
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