DJ_Mo

When creating Boot Deployment Media to a USB flash drive, is it better to use USB 2.0 vs 3.0 drive? Will USB 3.0 drive get to the deployment GUI faster?

We have been using SmartDeploy primarily to image one PC at a time. Our process: 1) Golden virtual image created. 2) SmartDeploy enterprise installed on admin PC) 3) Capture Image using SmartDeploy 4) Created smartdeploy boot USB media 5) Store image on a file share (also platform packs installed here) 6) our techs boot using the SmartDeploy USB media and points to the image. 7) Images successfully. If we wanted to image a computer lab with 55 new PCs. What is the best practices on imaging a large lab like this? What would the steps be? I see now SmartDeploy offers a client, but how does the new PCs get the client (esp if Windows is not setup on it) ?

"If you are booting from USB, and it's never making it to SmartDeploy" ... this is the issue. It wasn't a bad boot media or bad/not enough RAM. I recreated the boot media again with no Platform Packs, and that fixed it.

We are trying to deploy Windows 10 64bit on a Dell Optiplex 960. We boot with a USB created SmartPE (64-bit) [UEFI/Legacy boot, FAT32 media]. We cannot get past the splash screen (black background with teal windows 10 logo), there is a set of spinning dots under the logo that keeps on rotating. It never gets to the SmartDeploy Wizard ... so we cannot continue. I have rebooted several times, and tried the same USB SmartPE media on other PCs and it works (different model #). I am thinking there needs to be a Windows 10 Optiplex 960 driver on the platform pack (currently only Windows 7 is available). Any suggestions or help?

SmartDeploySupport I tried the new drivers as suggested for the Optiplex 3040 and it still is having the same driver issues in Windows. I am emailing support with all requested log files. Please help.

Well I had to edit this post.

For the past few years, we have come to rely on the available Platform Packs available for download for the various Dell models we use. Generally it always at least gets us going in Windows, and we perform another scan on support.dell.com for any new updates. However recently the Dell Optiplex 3040 Windows 10 64 bit Platform Pack, caused a hiccup. When it booted to Windows: ethernet, video and audio drivers were not installed and had an exclamation point in device manager. As the system wouldn't go online because of ethernet driver issues. We downloaded all necessary drivers from chipset to audio on a USB stick. Chipset drivers installed fine. But the rest would not install. Giving "fatal error" messages etc. Never had such drivers issues, and the Dell rep mentioned likely the incorrect drivers were installed from the SmartDeploy image. So the Dell support rep suggested to reload the unit manually, which we did and even without any internet connection...Windows itself picked all the correct drivers for everything to function. So my questions are: How do we report problematic drivers packs to SmartDeploy? Am I naive to trust the pre-made platforms packs or should I be double checking the inf files in them? If so how? -

I am wanting to use SmartDeploy to deploy "Windows 10 Edu". I wanted to get ideas on best practices on how to remove certain provisioned packages from the base image, so when new domain users log on to the PC... they wont see certain provisioned packages. Provisioned packages such as "Get Office", XBOX, Solitaire Collection, One Drive, Mail App, Groove Music, Zune Video, "Skype Preview" etc. So far I have fired up my virtual machine, installed Windows 10 Edu, installed Office 2016, our antivirus, Adobe Reader DC, performed all updates. Do I remove the apps using PowerShell commands as mentioned in this article "https://4sysops.com/archives/remove-provisioned-built-in-apps-in-windows-10/" ? Does this need to run under Local Administrator? Or should I use Local Group Policy or should I use our AD Group Policy on the PCs (my fear with this is, I dont want it to slow down boot up time if it has to run uninstall apps all the time on boot up)? Links or instructions on how to do this would be great. Any other advice on what you guys do with Windows 10 Edu version before deployment. Thanks.