WDS and XP Part 1

Intro

In this series of articles, I will go through getting Windows XP images on the new Windows Deployment Services.

To do this, I will be using Windows 2008 server with Windows XP SP2 + Driver Packs.

The reference machine will be a single processor vmware virtual machine which will provide snapshotting capabilities handy for the times when you need to go back.

I will also be convering issues with differing HALs and ways to solve this.

Here’s what will be convered in each part

• Part 1
  • Windows Deployment Services
• Part 2
  • Windows XP Setup
  • Applications/Software
  • Users/Permissions
• Part 3
  • DriverPacks
  • HAL Setup
  • Sysprep
  • Capturing XP
• Part 4
  • Deployment

Windows Deployment Services

Outline

This section will cover the following areas:

• WDS role installation
• Boot images
• WinPE HAL Detection

WDS role installation

First of you will need to install the WDS component in Windows 2008. I won’t go into detail since if your reading this then you should already know how to add roles to a Windows Server.

I will however go through how to setup the WDS server.

First off is to open the WDS snapin and go through the wizard in creating a new WDS server. It should ask for the remote installation folder, DHCP option 60 settings and PXE server setttings. The wizard quite self explanatory and I will let you figure it out.

Boot Images

Once the WDS server is setup, you will need some boot images. These images allow the destination computer to boot into a preinstall environment so Windows can download the image to it. Essentially this is Microsoft’s version of a linux live cd, albeit very lacking in features. In any case, you will need a Windows 2008 dvd. On this DVD there will be a boot.wim file.

Right click on “Boot Images” in the WDS snapin and select “add boot image”. Browse to you boot.wim file on the dvd and follow the wizard to complete the installation of the boot image. The rest of the wizard just allows you to give the boot image a polite name and the rest should be a matter of clicking next until you get to finish.

You will now need a capture image. Right-click on the image you just added and select “create capture image”. This will create a capture image to a location you specify. Once the capture image is created you need to add it into the “Boot Images” section in the WDS snapin as describe before.

The boot images setup is now complete.

WinPE HAL Detection

If you doing setting up your reference machine on a uniprocessor machine you will quickly find out that when you try and deploy that image to a multiprocessor machine it won’t come up in the list.

The solution is a hotfix by microsoft. If you have the Windows 2008 with SP2 then you supposed to already have the hotfix.

In any case, to work out if you have it or not take a look at KB935772.

What you need to do is mount your main boot image and copy the wdsclient.dll file to it.

Once this is done you have a working WDS install ready for XP.

Move on to part 2