Erik

Hi Wally, Were you able to get your USB key up and running with Media Wizard or the process detailed here? In the past we have seen some problems with Media Wizard making a USB key bootable. Usually this is due to U3 software being installed on the USB key. If your USB stick has U3 technology, you will need to first uninstall it. http://u3.sandisk.com/launchpadremoval.htm. If your USB key is still not bootable you can perform a format of the disk then re-run Media Wizard. Open an elevated command window and run the following commands: (As you mentioned earlier this will only work on Windows Vista and higher. If you do not have access to a Vista or higher OS you can run the commands from the SmartPE by hitting Shift + F10 to open a command prompt.) Diskpart List Disk (determine which disk is your USB stick, probably disk 1 if you only have 1 hard drive) Select Disk 1 (use the correct disk number here) Detail Disk (ensure you have your USB drive selected) Clean (this destroys all data) Create partition primary Active Format fs=ntfs quick Assign letter e: (any drive letter that works is fine) Exit Re-run Media Wizard to create the bootable USB key Thanks, Erik

Hey Wally, Yes, You can set the deployment to be completely automated. To do so you need to make a slight change to the XML file that you exported from Deploy Wizard. Add mode=”Unattended” attribute to the <deploy_wizard> node. i.e. <deploy_wizard mode=”Unattended”> (Attached picture 1.png) [*]Optional – Adjust the <unattend_delay> node to number of seconds to show warning message. i.e. <unattend_delay>120</unattend_delay> (Attached picture 2.png) The default is 60 seconds if no value is present. [*]Run the Media Wizard and include the updated answer file on boot or deployment media. There are a few things to note with answer files. The Unattended delay serves two purposes, to give the user a chance to cancel deployment and more importantly it gives SmartPE a chance to initiate all the resources that it will use (i.e. network connection). Another thing to keep in mind is that for Deploy Wizard to make use of the answer file it needs to be at the root of any drive attached to the computer it is running on. This can be the physical hard drive, a USB drive or CD, or it can be the RAM drive (X:\) created by SmartPE. Erik

Hi Wally, WDS supports multicast in two different ways. The first option is auto-cast. This is the method we tend to use most. In auto-cast, as the name states, when you join a client the session starts automatically. It's what happens next that is the particularly cool bit. Say your first client is joined and 50% through the multicast session, then you join another client. The next client will automatically start receiving data from the multicast session. When the first client is finished the second client will only have the second half of the data, its at this point that WDS will loop back to the beginning of the multicast session and resend the first 50% to the second client. This gives you quite a bit of flexibility in you imaging sessions. The second option is schedule-cast. This is much more like Ghost. You have the option to either start a multicast session at a predefined time or when the server meets a desired client threshold. If you want to queue all of your clients before starting the multicast session this is what you are looking for. To select schedule-cast you can follow the WDS guide to the Multicast Type section of WDS. At this point you would simply change the selection from auto to schedule-cast and pick the option that is right for you. Erik

Hello, You will not be able to leverage any Symantec Ghost capabilities with SmartDeploy Enterprise. SmartDeploy and Ghost create two different image types. Ghost uses a .gho file which contains a sector based replication of the hard drive you are copying. SmartDeploy on the other hand uses a .wim file which is a file based copy of the hard drive you are imaging. If SmartDeploy is something you would like to use/implement with PXE this can be done by utilizing Microsoft's Windows Deployment Services. I am not sure if you are familiar with WDS but it allows you to PXE boot and image client computers. When PXE booting with WDS you will load the SmartDeploy version of Windows PE (SmartPE) which is a 32bit environment. As long as you are using Platform Packs to build your boot media you should not have to worry about any driver injection. There is a very good writeup on how to integrate SmartDeploy with WDS by Devon here. It is a 7 part post that takes you from capturing a master image all the way to deploying a multicast image with SmartDeploy and WDS. Hope this helps! If you run into any problems you can always contact Support. Erik

Hi Ben, I assume the operating system you are referring to is Windows XP? If this is the case, you will need to run sysprep with the custom sysprep.inf on your master image before capturing. The process will go as follows. Install Windows XP on a VM Login to the Administrator account Make all customizations Download the Deployment Tools from MS Unpack the Deploy.Cab to c:\sysprep Open Setupmgr.exe from c:\sysprep Click Next Select Create New Select Sysprep Setup Select Version of XP that is being used Select “No, do not fully automate the installation” Next through all the sysprep options (or click the last option) then select finish (You will not need to set any of the options here as sysprep will be run again when deploying you master image.) Save the sysprep.inf file to C:\sysprep [*]Open the sysprep.inf file and add the UpdateServerProfileDirectory=1 under the [unattended] section [*]Run sysprep.exe from c:\sysprep Check Use Mini-Setup Change Shutdown mode to Reboot Click Reseal [*]Go through all the Windows Setup options, and log back into the machine. [*]You can create a new user and login to make sure all of your customizations are applied. [*]Now you can capture the image with Capture Wizard and redeploy. Thanks, Erik