WDS – Unattended file – Removing /Formatting Drive Partitions
Nov17

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...

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WDS – Unattended file – Joining a Domain Automatically
Nov17

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...

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Windows 8 -“Windows cannot read the  setting from the unattend answer file.”
Nov17

Windows 8 -“Windows cannot read the setting from the unattend answer file.”

KB ID 0000511  Problem Note: This is applicable to running the Windows 8 Developer Preview in VMware Workstation. When you attempt to power on the machine you see the following error: Install Windows Windows cannot read the <ProductKey> setting from the unattend answer file. Solution 1. Delete your broken virtual machine and create a new one, but this time select “I will install the operating system later” Note: Just...

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Windows 8 Wont Run in VMware Workstation
Nov17

Windows 8 Wont Run in VMware Workstation

KB ID 0000506  Problem When attempting to power on a VM built with the Windows 8 (Developer preview) you will see the following: Error: *** VMware Workstation internal monitor error *** vcpu-0:NOT_IMPLEMENTED vmcore/vmm/intr/apic.c:1903 Please report this problem by selecting menu item Help > VMware on the Web > Request Support , or by going to the Web page”{URL removed”}. Please provide us with the log file...

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Running Windows Server 8 in VMware ESXi
Nov17

Running Windows Server 8 in VMware ESXi

KB ID 0000590  Problem The very fist time I tried this was on ESXi 4.1, if you try and install Windows 8 Server on that platform, you will see the following. Your computer ran into a problem and needs to restart. If you’d like to know more, you can search online later for this code: HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED It’s collecting error info and will restart in: x seconds Note: You will also see this in VMware player, and VMware...

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