WDS – Unattended file – Removing /Formatting Drive Partitions

KB ID 0000490 

Problem

Over the last couple of years I’ve done a lot of imaging of School PC’s I don’t know why but they come with a myriad of different drive and partition configurations. Even big vendors like HP and Dell ship their machines with recovery partitions these days.

If you are imaging with WDS this can cause a problem so what I usually want to do is remove all the partitions, create one big one that takes up all the drive, and format it as NTFS.

Solution

Before you begin make sure you are clued up on working with WDS unattended files, run through my instructions here.

The following procedure needs to be added to the WDS Unattended file NOT the unattended file for the image, (again run through KB0000180 if you are unsure.)

1. While editing your Unattended answerfile you need to locate, “Microsoft-Windows-Setup_neutral” and add “DiskConfiguration” to the “1 windowsPE” component.

2. Right click it and add a disk > Set Disk ID = 0 > Set WillWipeDisk = true.

3. Right Click > Create Partition > Set Extend = true > Set Order = 1 > Set Type = Primary.

4. Select Modify Partitions > Set Active = true > Set Extend = false > Set Format = NTFS > Set Label = SYSTEM > Set Letter = C > Set Order = 1 > Set Partition ID = 1.

5. This procedure will add the following to your unattended file.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

NA

WDS – Unattended file – Joining a Domain Automatically

KB ID 0000494 

Problem

During a large rollout the more things you can automate the better, before you continue though be aware of one thing…

You can only automatically join a client to a domain if it has an auto generated random machine name!*

*Note: This is not 100% true, if you pre-stage the computer objects into Active Directory with the GUID of the machine (you can see this on the screen at pXe boot time, or get it from the BIOS) Then you can auto join the machines and they will come in with the correct name. However, if you have a large number of machines to build, this is more time consuming than simply renaming them after they have been imaged.

Solution

Before you begin make sure you are clued up on working with WDS unattended files, run through my instructions here.

The following procedure needs to be added to the images unattended file NOT the WDS Unattended file, (again run through KB0000180 if you are unsure.)

1. While editing your unattended answerfile you need to locate, “Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup_neutral”, add it to pass 4 (Specialize) and set the ComputerName entry to * (an asterisk).

Note: In this section you can also enter to windows product code, and owner details, as well as your time zone.

2. Then locate, “Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin”, add it to pass 4 (Specialize). Set the JoinDomain entry to the name of your domain. Set UnsecureJoin to “true”.

4. This procedure will add the following to your unattended file.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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