Work Life: Awesome Links for Custom Install Disks

November 30, 2012

I really enjoy deployment in the enterprise environment and also making the perfect Install disk for my home computers. I don't like wasting time with installation. I want to start it up and walk away.

Links 

With all MS Service Packs and hotfixes, Microsoft has made it possible to slipstream them into installation disks which is a great thing. It really cuts down on the time having to babysit the computer to do updates (if you don't have WSUS). Well, as time goes on and more patches being released, it is really time consuming keeping up with all of them and also time consuming running each one in slipstream mode.

Along came Ntlite and RyanVM. Nlite is the most awesome Installation Customization tool. I have used quite a bit of them but this one is probably the best. It will let you do pretty much anything. And the other godsend is RyanVM who is a guy that has been keeping up with all of the patches that are post SP2.

Winnaddons is probably the most amazing set of programs that you can integrate into your installation disk. These add-ons allow you to have programs automatically installed for you during the installation of windows. It will take some time to go through the list but I guarantee that you will find programs that you will want to install right away and programs that you will want to integrate into your installation of Windows.

RyanVM also has some add-ons to download.

Nlite has a General Usage Guide up. It is old but it will get you started.

RyansVM's Forums has some interesting stuff.

And the best link ever for windows users, admins, and techies: http://www.msfn.org/ Peruse the forums and you will get more then you will ever have time for.

Best Practices 

Some things that I have learned:

Make sure that you have a copy of Windows XP with SP2 that is in your license notebook. You can create your own slipstreamed copy of Windows XP with SP2, but I have run into issues doing it that way. Some things don't get upgraded when you slipstream SP2 into the Windows Gold disk. It is better to start with the 'real' version of Windows XP with SP2.

Test these in Virtual PC 2007 before using of course.

You will not be able to use these disks when you create your Images for Windows Deployment Services. I haven't found out why, but it just doesn't work. So until SP3 comes out your WDS solutions will suffer unless you have the patience to download all the critical hotfixes and slipstream them yourself or unless you have an awesome script to do it for you. I have neither, but we use WSUS and it gets the job done pretty quickly without any intervention

Stay as organized as possible. It is easy to get jumbled up with all the files that you will be using.

Stay simple at first and then get more daring. It is easy to do all that work and testing only to have the machine blue screen on you.

(Matthew Johnson)

Work Life: Windows 10 is a pain in the butt

Windows 10 is a pain in the butt. There, I said it. I feel better, don't you? So, what makes WinX such a pain? How about we start with setting up a laptop. Please note: the following is based on MY personal experience and may or may not reflect what has happened to anyone else on the face of the planet - though, judging by the number of articles I found to help get me through the painful setup, I could easily surmise that, unlike Tigger, I'm NOT the only one.

The device: Brand new Dell Latitude E5570

The laptop was supposed to ship with windows 10 already installed. Nope. This one came with windows 7 and a WinX install DVD. No problem, right? Wrong.

Because the laptop had Windows 7, the BIOS was set to Legacy Mode, meaning Windows 10 wasn't going to play nice. Windows 10, if you haven't heard, requires UEFI/EFI BIOS. If those are geek/greek-speak, don't worry. I am not going into details, other than to explain how I got Windows 10 installed.

In the BIOS, I had to disable Legacy Mode. I wasn't allowed to. Why not? Because Windows 7 had already started the install process and became the defacto BIOS type. Yay. I eventually found my way to a "Factory Reset" option that allowed me to set UEFI! Yay!

Not so fast. Once the UEFI was set (along with Secure Boot), I had to pick a boot rom with which to start the computer. I had no such thing. Yoy. Okay, I hooked up the external DVD drive, slammed the WinX DVD into it and rebooted. Luckily, the computer immediately booted to the DVD! Yay!

Not so fast. I was presented with a WinX interface that asked me what I wanted to do - Factory Reset, Recovery, Reload, Eat Pizza on Tuesday with a Goat... Well, you get the idea. After several false starts, I finally managed to find the selection that seemed to work: Recovery. Yay!

Not so fast. The recovery did just that: It recovered, or tried to anyway, the Windows 7 install that first loaded when I booted the machine. I restarted the laptop and let it boot to the DVD. I am 99.99% sure I chose the exact same "Recovery" option, only this time, the system seemed to be reading the DVD and I could only guess/assume that things were installing Windows 10. Yay!

Welcome to Windows 10!

Wahoo!! Windows 10 installed and all was right with the world. Yay!

Not so fast. You see, the DVD only had Windows 10 on it. It had none of the required drivers for the laptop. A quick search to Dell (from another computer that could actually talk to the web) revealed a 580mb CAB file. Yay!

Not so fast. I burned the CAB file to a CD (from another computer) and loaded it onto the laptop. using the steps found in this VERY handy guide, I was able to expand the CAB and install the drivers via command line. Yay!

Not so fast. Edge would not run because I was logged in as the built-in administrator, even though I was actually using a user I had created. So, I eventually came upon THIS handy article about letting the ADMINISTRATOR actually run crap in Windows 10!

I installed various browsers, office software, printers, etc. Then, I installed Avast A/V that we use here. Yay!

Not so fast. Avast would not start various services it needed. Things kept erroring out. After some not-at-all-helpful searching, I decided to reinstall the program. After that finished, I was asked to restart the computer. Things were looking good! Yay!

Not so fast. When the laptop rebooted, I was greeted with a simple blue screen that only told me that a "device required isn't connected or can't accessed" (or something similar to that). After MUCH searching, the issue seemed to be related to the Secure Boot that was enabled in BIOS. So, reboot to BIOS and disable Secure Boot. Reboot the laptop and everything *seems* to be working. Yay!

I share this not as a simple whine-fest, but to let folks know that Windows 10 is not necessarily a straight-forward installation, even from scratch. But, with some perseverance and trial and error, you can get through it. Or, if anything, you stumble on an article like this that lets you know you aren't alone.

TL;DR - Windows 10 is a pain in the butt.