Phurious

I must respectfully disagree with this statement. Having an Enterprise license for Windows allows you to use and natively boot VHDs, which are a thing of beauty. I boot my main system from VHD, and even go so far as to use a differencing VHD when I am going to "try" something on my OS. If my experiment fails, I simply boot back into the "host" OS, discard the differencing VHD, at which time I can recreate a new differencing VHD or edit my BCD and choose to boot from my original VHD. VHDs are a large carrot that Microsoft dangles in order for you to purchase Software Assurance, and therefore receive "Enterprise" licenses for Windows 7. In the end I decided to go ahead and purchase a Microsoft TechNet subscription. It's $299 price was less that a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, and it gave me 10 licenses each for Windows 7 Enterpise, Professional, Ultimate, Home, Server 2008 R2, Server 2008 . . . you get the idea. Here is some good information on VHDs

Thank you for your reply! It had occurred to me to try using the admin share for the USB drive on the reference computer, but I had hoped Microsoft would allow use the use of a drive letter supplied in either the customsettings.ini or bootstrap.ini. I will test this and post my results. Also, the image will have to be tweaked for each OU. The different locations have different software requirements, so the image will have to be applied to a reference PC for each location, the software and settings configured, and the then the image will be re-sysprepped and sealed. I had assumed that since the image had to be sysprepped again, I should use a different UNATTEND.XML for the various OUs. Is this not a good idea?

<RANT> I must confess I completely skipped Vista, so this new Unattended process is alien to me. I have the Windows AIK installed for Windows 7, as well as the Microsoft MDT 2010. I have built a LiteTouch install for Windows 7 that works pretty well, but after the install is where things get confusing. Applying the LiteTouch install to a reference computer, I wish to then capture that image TO A USB drive for distribution/testing using LiteTouch. 1. It appears Microsoft has made this impossible by requiring a UNC path for a Deployment Share to capture the image. 2. We have a hierarchical structure to our AD OU requiring that machines be joined to our domain in a variety of OUs. The idea of requiring Admins to type the various paths to those OUs 20 - 100 times CORRECTLY during deployments seems unrealistic at best. 3. I find it puzzling that Microsoft does not have one tool that aides in the Unattended.xml creation. Why build a task sequence, and then have to verify and customize it in System Image Manager, to only later have to open the XML in Notepad to further customize settings that could not be done through the previous two tools. </RANT> If I must Sysprep an image (sysprep /generalize /shutdown /oobe /unattend:answerfile), for each separate OU so I may use the "MachineObjectOU" value, can I just copy and edit my original UNATTEND.XML file, or do I need to create a new one? If I may copy my original UNATTEND.XML, how much of the information in it is actually required? I have found plenty of documentation on the proper syntax of DISM, but no clear explanation of how it works. If I want to service my custom WIM images offline, I understand I may use DISM, but does that ACTUALLY install the updates on the image, or does it copy them to a location on the image from where they are run the first time the OS is installed?