[agressiv]

I just got WDS up and running in a lab and am trying to get a basic Vista image up and running, joining the domain.

Joining the domain silently works (there are a few things I have to click on which I haven't figured out yet but everything else seems to be automated) - and it is not prompting me to create a local account.

Problems:

I can't seem to open the boot.wim in the System Image Manager (it says there is no catalog and when I tell it to create one, it bombs saying that it could not allocate the required space in a registry log, and I dont have any disk space problems.)

I'm trying to use the auto-naming that RIS used to have and its not working (right click the WDS Server, properties, Directory Services) - I put in %MACHINENAME% as the computername in the unattended file but its ignoring it and just doing a randomly generated name.

How do you prevent the performance profiler from running? We dont really care about the results and its just a big waste of time (IMO) in a corporate environment.

I'd really rather not have to use a script at this point since we have 100+ OU's in our production network that would contain possible computer accounts and I dont want to have some huge script that handles every one of our branches.

Any ideas?

agressiv

This post has been edited by agressiv: 15 March 2007 - 02:31 PM

[pmol100]

About that auto naming of computer account, I can tell you, I have raised a case at Microsoft since it doesn't work here either.

The case has been logged in January and until today there is no solution.

In the Computername field in the unattended file you should only put a *, but even then it doesn't work.

[agressiv]

Thanks for the reply. Its good to know I'm not the only one who is having problems with what I would consider to be trivial. It was a core feature of RIS that I don't want to lose with WDS.

Anyways, looks like I'm out of luck on the performance profiler, but there are two screens that are still prompting me that I can't get to go away.

On one of the lines that has " <component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE", I've tried dropping the -WinPE but it made no difference.

agressiv

 prompt1.jpg (79.66K)
Number of downloads: 57
 prompt2.jpg (59.45K)
Number of downloads: 35

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
	<settings pass="windowsPE">
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<DynamicUpdate>
				<Enable>true</Enable>
			</DynamicUpdate>
			<UserData>
				<ProductKey>
					<Key>XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX</Key>
					<WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI>
				</ProductKey>
				<AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
				<FullName>Company</FullName>
				<Organization>Company</Organization>
			</UserData>
			<EnableFirewall>true</EnableFirewall>
			<EnableNetwork>true</EnableNetwork>
			<DiskConfiguration>
				<WillShowUI>Never</WillShowUI>
				<Disk wcm:action="add">
					<DiskID>0</DiskID>
					<WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk>
					<CreatePartitions>
						<CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
							<Order>1</Order>
							<Type>Primary</Type>
							<Size>1500</Size>
						</CreatePartition>
					</CreatePartitions>
					<ModifyPartitions>
						<ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
							<Active>true</Active>
							<Extend>true</Extend>
							<Format>NTFS</Format>
							<Label>Machine</Label>
							<Letter>C</Letter>
							<Order>1</Order>
							<PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
						</ModifyPartition>
					</ModifyPartitions>
				</Disk>
			</DiskConfiguration>
			<ImageInstall>
				<OSImage>
					<InstallTo>
						<DiskID>0</DiskID>
						<PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
					</InstallTo>
					<WillShowUI>OnError</WillShowUI>
				</OSImage>
			</ImageInstall>
		</component>
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<SetupUILanguage>
				<UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
			</SetupUILanguage>
			<InputLocale>0409:00000409</InputLocale>
			<UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
			<UserLocale>en-US</UserLocale>
			<SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
			<UILanguageFallback>en-US</UILanguageFallback>
		</component>
	</settings>
	<settings pass="specialize">
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<ComputerName>*</ComputerName>
			<RegisteredOrganization>Company</RegisteredOrganization>
			<RegisteredOwner>Company</RegisteredOwner>
		</component>
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<Identification>
				<JoinDomain>MYDOMAIN</JoinDomain>
				<Credentials>
					<Domain>MYDOMAIN</Domain>
					<Password>password</Password>
					<Username>user</Username>
				</Credentials>
			</Identification>
		</component>
	</settings>
	<settings pass="oobeSystem">
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<OOBE>
				<HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
				<NetworkLocation>Work</NetworkLocation>
				<ProtectYourPC>1</ProtectYourPC>
				<SkipUserOOBE>true</SkipUserOOBE>
			</OOBE>
			<UserAccounts>
				<DomainAccounts>
					<DomainAccountList wcm:action="add">
						<DomainAccount wcm:action="add">
							<Group>Administrators</Group>
							<Name>Domain Admins</Name>
						</DomainAccount>
						<Domain>mydomain.com</Domain>
					</DomainAccountList>
				</DomainAccounts>
				<AdministratorPassword>
					<Value>password</Value>
					<PlainText>true</PlainText>
				</AdministratorPassword>
			</UserAccounts>
			<TimeZone>Central Standard Time</TimeZone>
			<RegisteredOrganization>Company</RegisteredOrganization>
			<RegisteredOwner>Company</RegisteredOwner>
		</component>
	</settings>
	<cpi:offlineImage cpi:source="wim:d:/vista-x32/sources/install.wim#Windows Vista BUSINESS" xmlns:cpi="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:cpi" />
</unattend>

[theredone447]

I don't know about the last one unless you use the SkipMachineOOBE but to get rid of the other one you need something like this

 
<component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="x86" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <InputLocale>en-US</InputLocale> 
  <SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale> 
  <UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage> 
  <UserLocale>en-US</UserLocale> 
  </component> 

under the OOBESytem pass

[agressiv]

That was it! Thanks!

agressiv

[JaySwift]

Hi Guys

Has anybody heard back from Microsoft on this yet? I also logged this issue, but nobody really understood what I was on about and nobody could give me an indication whether somebody is actually looking in to it or not.

The computer naming issue is seriously holding us back from putting WDS in to production.

JS

[agressiv]

I will open up a premier case with them now - I actually have some time.

agressiv

[agressiv]

Finally figured this out, but I figured it out on my own.

Skipping all the troubleshooting, make sure you replace, in the Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin section:

<Credentials>
   <Domain>DOMAIN</Domain>
   <Password>password</Password>
   <Username>user</Username>
</Credentials>

with

<UnsecureJoin>True</UnsecureJoin>

While UnsecureJoin in the documentation refers to pre-staging computer accounts (which I'm not doing), I'm guessing that the computer naming policy is also qualifying as "pre-staging" at least in the sense that the XML file is not responsible for the computer name.

A good way of testing it is to set the policy and NOT use an ImageUnattend.xml (just use a WDSClientUnattended.xml) - that should name the computer appropriately but prompt you for everything else. This is the one thing the Microsoft guy did that led me down the path that it would work and I just needed to figure out what to tweak.

agressiv

[ashleyoneill]

has anyone got any further with this?

in our environment i need to be able to add machines to the domain with a name specified by the engineer like you could with RIS.

[ashleyoneill]

still no-one has an answer on this ?

[FireGeier]

ashleyoneill, on Apr 24 2007, 02:45 PM, said:

still no-one has an answer on this ?

Hello ashleyoneill!

I've no experiences with WDS but I think this thread on MSTechNet could may help you out.

Regards,
Martin

[ashleyoneill]

the answer to this is

use BDD 2007 to deploy vista machines in an enterprise environment.

WDS alone does not have the ability to support a domain based environment properly when building machines in respect to naming them.

[jfmartel]

ashleyoneill, on May 21 2007, 05:18 AM, said:

the answer to this is

use BDD 2007 to deploy vista machines in an enterprise environment.

WDS alone does not have the ability to support a domain based environment properly when building machines in respect to naming them.

Or MS simply wants to push its BDD...

Kinda gay since WDS is the replacement for RIS...

[ashleyoneill]

yes its really annoying because i like the way WDS works and dont like BDD as it seems to be a bit of a tacky tool

[gangsterhenk]

add %MACHINENAME% to the COMPUTERNAME SECTION (Shell-setup), add it in specialize pass and it will work.

UnsecureJoin is FALSE in my unattended, and auto domain joining goes fine, and i get the correct pre-staged computername in the correct OU

This post has been edited by gangsterhenk: 25 May 2007 - 02:27 AM