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Jonesey007

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Windows Hardware Independant Image

HI
If i have 10 different laptops (HP/Dell/ASUS) etc, and at present i create a build for each laptop seperatly. So i install Windows 7 or 8, add drivers and apps then take a ghost image so i can clone to multiple instances of that particular laptop. I then move onto the Dell laptops and do the same and so on etc.
I have started looking into Windows Hardware Independant imaging and ideally would like to create one master image that i can use on all laptops with limited customisation.
I have looked into this site http://www.instructables.com/id/Preparing-a-Hardware-Independent-Windows-7-Image/ where the user uses the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and SysPrep.
Before i go down this route, i just wanted to check if this is the best way of achieving the Hardware Independant Image or is there a better way of going about this. Any suggestions would be greatly apprecated
Thanks
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Krzysztof Pytko
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Jonesey007

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Thanks for the quick reply Krzysztof

Is it an issue that i dont use Windows Deployment Services? I havn't really looked into it but all our laptops are standalone and don't get networked up. We usually use Ghost multicast or ghost an image to one laptop and then use a cloning machine to clone the original onto multiple HDDs
Hi,

The WAIK is a toolkit framework to assist creating a hardware independent image. It includes images which is now superseded by dism.exe. WAIK is also superseded by WADK, mainly for Windows 8.

To use either you actually need Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (aka MDT). This gives an easy to use GUI which takes most of the hard work out.

 A walkthrough is here

Note Johan is a major expert in deployment. Believe what he says at the beginning. WDS is not a deployment solution. It's plumbing. It provides PXE booting and is best left there, i.e. don't configure it with boot images and answer files. That's what MDT excels at.

You have a single master source image, and a task-sequence that does all customisation on the fly so the whole process is dynamic and will handle most hardware without change. You will only need to add new drivers occasionally when you get brand new hardware come in.

Read up on driver management here:

http://deployment.xtremeconsulting.com/2010/03/11/assign-drivers-to-computer-makes-and-models/ 

Mike
No problem, you're welcome :)

No, you don't have to use WDS. This is really convenient to handle that but you may simply use Windows PE to deploy offline captured image using ImageX.exe command. Windows PE is also available to prepare over WAIK/ADK

I would suggest to use Windows ADK as this is released for Windows 8/2012 and support all previous OSes. You may find it under this location
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30652

Krzysztof