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Manually start Windows Deployment Services Client

TheInterrozitor
TheInterrozitor asked
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Last Modified: 2012-05-05
Hello everybody.

after PXE-booting the original boot.wim from Vista/2008, a menu is shown where i can select the install-image that has to be installed.
I now want to find out, by which Application this menu is shown. On a Tech-Net page, I found the information that the "Windows Deployment Services Client" in fact is Vistas setup.exe. But that seems to be impossible, because there is no setup.exe in the boot.wim.

Why I want to know that? Well, I have to "get between". When the boot.wim is started, I first want to start a tool of my own to do some preparation stuff, after that I want to start the original Install-Image-Chooser-Menu.

The normal way an application is started in PE (Registry-Entry, unattend.xml, winpeshl.ini) doesn´t seem to be the way the Windows Deployment Services Client is started.

Does anybody have any ideas?
Thanks!
Tom
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lscapa

Commented:
What exactly are you tryin got attempt in "getting between"? There has been some changes in how WDS processes.
TheInterrozitor

Author

Commented:
I want to start a Tool that creates the partitions in which the OS has to be installed. It is not possible to use the partitioning-tool integrated in the boot-image.
But in fact it is not interesting what i want to do there, my problem is how i can inhibit the start of the Windows Deployment Services Client, then do anything, and then start the Windows Deployment Services Client from my application..
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TheInterrozitor

Author

Commented:
So in other words, I can not modify the boot-Image but have to customize the install-image with MDT so that my application is started from the the install-image while installing?
lscapa

Commented:
correct it falls into the LTI (Light Touch Installation) in Microsofts framework. There are some limitations but the docs provided in the MDT will explain them to you. This is also another excellent website for setting up LTI. It was written for the earlier version of MDT but will still give you a good overview.
http://www.myitforum.com/myITWiki/Default.aspx?Page=OSD&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
 
 
lscapa

Commented:
In fact MDT will let you customize the partitions and all so it might even prove more usefull...

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