How to setup XP Mode on Windows 7
Windows 7 was just recently released to the General Public and has been in the hands of TechNet and MSDN subscribers for a while before that, and one of the features that I have been utilising lately is “XP Mode” which is a glorified version of Virtual PC as we have known it in previous releases. Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 (not to be confused with Windows Virtual PC 2007) is actually one of two pre-requisites for XP mode with the other being “Hardware-assisted virtualization (HAV)”. HAV are processors with the Intel VT, AMD-V or VIA VT feature which will need to be enabled...
Read MoreWindows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 4/4
Welcome to the final article in this series on Windows Deployment Services, WAIK and Windows 7. Our first articled introduced WDS and its configuration with parts 2 and 3 focusing on our beloved WAIK tool and Windows System Image Manager and the creation of our XML answer files. We conclude the series by introducing one of the enhanced features in WDS and Windows 2008 and that’s the ability to inject driver packages and have them deployed to our client computers along with the install image. Note that this functionality is only available when you are installing images of the following...
Read MoreWindows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 3/4
We are back again and in today’s article we will continue our efforts in automating our Windows 7 deployment via Windows Deployment Services utilising the WAIK tool and the creation of our XML Answer files. In Part 2 of this series we focused on the creation of the WDSUnattend.xml file that is required to automate the Windows Pre Execution Boot for our WDS clients and took care of the partitioning of our disks. If you missed part 2 of this series, you can access it here. Today we continue our efforts in utilising the Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) to create our ImageUnattend.xml...
Read MoreWindows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 2/4
Welcome back to the second part of this series and in the next 2 article’s I will be focusing our efforts on creating the necessary xml answer files to automate the deployment of our Windows 7 image via Windows Deployment Services (WDS). In part 1, I provided you with step by step instructions on installing and configuring your WDS role on your Windows 2008 R2 machine. If you missed it, you can access part 1 here. Our focus in today’s article revolves around the creation of the WDSUnattend.xml file that is required to automate the Windows Pre Execution Boot for WDS...
Read MoreWindows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 1/4
I have been known to be at the cutting edge of technology, early adoption of Microsoft technologies is a must and this time round nothing is going to change. I first played with Windows Deployment Services (WDS) back in the day when it was referred to as Remote Installation Services (RIS) and had first exposure to the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) back when it was in beta and so was Vista at the time. I took the plunge and deployed Windows Vista using Light Touch deployment via WDS and the WAIK a month after Vista was released to the enterprise and today I will be providing...
Read MoreWindows 7 is coming to a store near you …
Well, it sounds like a life time ago that I first started investigating the next and greatest thing since sliced bread, yes Windows Vista. After a 5 year gap between operating system versions, there was a lot of hype around Windows Vista and how much better it is than Windows XP. Many argue against that and have not yet gone down the route of implementing Windows Vista into their networks or on their home PC’s. XP has better start up times, ummm, yes if you are running XP on today’s hardware, but how about we run XP on a Pentium 4 with 256 RAM and compare that against...
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