Joseph Stickel

Hello Stephen

In order to use unattended deployment with machines that we do not have a platform packs for, you would simply need to create custom platform packs for each of those devices. You can choose to include the drivers for these devices or just create platform packs with device specific manufacture and model so that the deployment wizard sees platform packs exist thus continuing through the unattended deployment. 

You can find a video on how to create you own platform packs here: https://www.smartdeploy.com/platform-packs/

Here is an example.

Hello Steve

I have emailed you directly about possibly using Tasks to accomplish this.

Hello Boomerman

This sounds like it may be an issue with the version of SmartDeploy you are running.

Please download and update to the current version, create new media, then try to deploy again.

Hello Bam

Please try adding a blank text document in each of the folders that are not showing info in the SD console, then close and reopen the console.

Hello

Software installation (or any other command line operation) can be added in the Tasks pane, via the Deploy Wizard (or Answer File Wizard) advanced options. Tasks can be run during any phase of deployment, and the easiest option is to run them from a folder on C:\ on the target device. To do this, you would copy the installer files to an easy-to-remember folder on the reference VM (such as C:\Software) prior to capture, then add a silent/unattended installation command via the Tasks pane. The exact syntax for silent/unattended software installation will vary, so you’ll want to check the documentation for that specific software to be sure. Here’s an example of a common software task:

Phase:                                 First boot as system

Command line:                 cmd /c "C:\Software\Antivirus\Setup.exe /s"

All of the same best practices below would apply to getting multicasting working with WDS – it’s more or less the same protocol regardless of how you’re booting the target devices, whether console-initiated deployment or PXE boot using WDS.

We have a white paper for how to integrate SmartDeploy with Windows Deployment Services here:

https://www.smartdeploy.com/wp-content/uploads/SmartDeploy_WDS.pdf

Unfortunately, this is not possible – each deployment is a discrete operation that has no awareness of the others, so it is quite possible for the same custom computer name to be generated twice, particularly if you’re only using two pseudo-random digits as you’ve described below. You can significantly reduce the likelihood of identical computer names by increasing the number of random digits (this is why we have 8 digits by default), but the only 100% reliable method is to use a non-random method of computer naming – either reading from a wmi query (this can include the user-definable Asset-tag field, which is available in the BIOS on many devices), or re-using the existing computer name.