Rebuild Deployment Solution Automation/Intial Deployment Boot

When trying to figure out driver support for WinPE I stumbled on two articles on how to add drivers in the automation environment. There is an article on how to do this on kb.altiris.com, but I was never able to get it to work properly. After some messing around I found an easier way to do this.

1. Browse to the bootwiz folder in the \\localhost\NSCap\bin\Win32\X86\Deployment\bootwiz and run the bootwiz.exe file.

   

2. Name the configuration; this wizard is almost the same as in Deployment Server 6.9. Click next after you enter a name and leave the rest as default.

   

3. On this page I also was able to properly add the drivers for VMware when doing my tests on ESX 4. When using KB 47757 I was unable to get the drives to be added correctly. Even after running through KB 44474 to verify I have the right drivers WinPE never loads them.

   

4. Leave all the settings default

   

5. The last step is just a summary for you to check all your settings before committing the build.

   

After you click finish the second wizard will walk you through the rest of the build.

1. Choose the boot disk option. This will allow you to create a new initial deployment cd.

   

2. Choose ISO, automation environment and the location of where the ISO will be saved.

   

3. Now the ISO will be built and you can mount it in VMware or burn it for physical machines.

   

The last thing to check is to make sure your you initial deploy is set correctly.

1. Go to settings > all settings
2. Expand Deployment and Migration
3. Highlight Initial Deployment Settings
4. The section that references Burn Bootable Initial Deployment CD, you will burn the one you created above and not the one it references. (to avoid confusion within your organization you can rename and replace your image with the default one that this page references
5. Add the task or job that you want initial deploy to run.

SUMMARY:

After running through all these steps I found this easier to modify and configure the WinPE 2.1 for Deployment Solution 7.0 than to use the script and manually copying your files into the WinPE file structure.

I hope this also works for you.