Best way to create W10 Pro reference computer and deploy the image

ahelton said:

I've successfully deployed the image to all computers!

The only real issues I had was:

1) The timeout command in my batch script failing and
2) MS Office not activating properly

I ended up having to manually enter the activation key logged-in as administrator to get it to finally activate. Is there a way to have it activate automatically? Or is it supposed to auto-activate for a volume license key and mine is just being ornery?

What's your volume activation solution? (KMS or MAK)? I imagine you're using a MAK key.

I have observed some activation flakiness with both Windows and Office when using a volume activation solution (KMS is what's available to me). Sometimes it just breaks and claims to be not activated when moved to another computer (I had this happen on a bunch of laptops last year where I work). I haven't been seeing that problem recently, though. I think it might help to activate through the command prompt, although I cannot say for sure. Activation can also be automated with a script. It might also help if the product key was pre-installed on your office installer. I can't speak specifics here, sorry. I have had this problem before but I can't say for sure what a solution might be. When I do office deployments in this fashion, I install office/ activate it through command prompt, but then never open office before capturing. Again- I don't know of any specific solutions but neither do I know a whole lot about your setup.

>>Generally its supposed to automatically find your activation server and activate with the installed product key.

ahelton said:

So if I modify my WinPE .wim, can I then just copy the boot.wim file over to my USB without running the MakeWinPEMedia /UFD command?

Yes, with a USB flash drive you have read/ write permissions. With a .iso this isn't the case, unless you have some sort of software that can modify it.

ahelton said:

Did this actually work for you in a live environment? It worked for me in my test script, but when I added it to my actual batch deployment script is throws a "not recognized internal or external command" error. Bummer. Seemed like the perfect solution to adding a delay.

Seems to have worked for me (I should probably test in WinPE). Here's my script:

File: arg.cmd

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Testing timer...
TIMEOUT /t 5
ECHO Timer over...

Output:

ahelton said:

Did this actually work for you in a live environment? It worked for me in my test script, but when I added it to my actual batch deployment script is throws a "not recognized internal or external command" error. Bummer. Seemed like the perfect solution to adding a delay.

Yeah, that doesn't seem to work in WinPE. Rats... will have to seek out another solution

ahelton said:

Did this actually work for you in a live environment? It worked for me in my test script, but when I added it to my actual batch deployment script is throws a "not recognized internal or external command" error. Bummer. Seemed like the perfect solution to adding a delay.

*>>The solution is to add 'timeout.exe' and 'timeout.exe.mui' to the WinPE image.

*mount WinPE's .boot.wim*

On a Windows 10 machine:
-Navigate to %WINDIR%\System32\
-Search 'timeout.exe'
-copy both timeout.exe and timeout.mui to <WinPE mount>\Windows\System32.

>>Then you can use Timeout /t to delay in a script. It isn't going to function as it does in Windows, it just shows the seconds remaining (you can still end the timer by pressing a key). There might be more files that you need to copy to get it working 100%- but this method allows for the delay

*>>You might want to change the command to timeout /t > nul so nothing gets written to the screen when the delay is running

Images:

RBunning said:

*>>The solution is to add 'timeout.exe' and 'timeout.exe.mui' to the WinPE image.

Nice! I'm going to try this.

Also, I think you can just add a /nobreak parameter after the number of seconds specified to effectively prevent the delay from being interrupted by any accidental key press.

Oh, and this might interest you...although you probably already know it. In case you don't, you can evidently create options/choices in a batch file. I think I am going to try to put this to use and have one option for capturing an image and a second option for deploying the image to essentially automate the whole process.

RBunning said:

Yes, with a USB flash drive you have read/ write permissions. With a .iso this isn't the case, unless you have some sort of software that can modify it.

Alright. This is where I was hung up and not understanding things. Now it all makes sense why you have to rebuild and such. Thanks for your patience :)

ahelton said:

Nice! I'm going to try this.

Also, I think you can just add a /nobreak parameter after the number of seconds specified to effectively prevent the delay from being interrupted by any accidental key press.

Oh, and this might interest you...although you probably already know it. In case you don't, you can evidently create options/choices in a batch file. I think I am going to try to put this to use and have one option for capturing an image and a second option for deploying the image to essentially automate the whole process.

Yeah- variables, conditional statements, etc... are what can control the flow of a script and program. That's an excellent idea for having two separate options for capturing and deploying. For capturing, you could have the user specify which drive letter to capture from and where to deposit the captured image to. It would be nice to have a delay timer that would tick down and if the user did not specify which choice to use, it would automatically go and deploy. For deployment, I feel the less user interaction the better. Scripting is a very powerful tool to have available to you.

ahelton said:

Alright. This is where I was hung up and not understanding things. Now it all makes sense why you have to rebuild and such. Thanks for your patience :)

: D That's great.

RBunning said:

What's your volume activation solution? (KMS or MAK)? I imagine you're using a MAK key.

I think we have the option of using KMS or MAK, but are actually using just MAK.