Creating a customized image of WHS2011–Part 1

I got a comment on the post ”Installing WHS 2011 on “headless” hardware using AutoUnattend.xml” with a question in the direction of sysprep and WHS2011.

If you don’t now “Sysprep.exe” here is a short explanation:

Sysprep.exe is a tool u can use to prepare a customized Windows installation for capturing and distributing to other computers. The reason you would want to do this is if you are going to deploy a lot of systems with the same drivers, and/or software configuration. Sysprep.exe is a “Online” tool that you run from a booted Windows OS, it´s located in “C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep\”. IMPORTANT – Do NOT run this tool on you workstation, there is a good chance that you will destroy your installation. Of course, if you already have a WHS2011 that would not be a problem, you can just restore you system

If your not a IT pro dealing with tons of systems there can still be good reasons for making you own customized image of Windows. Looking at client OS it make sense to have a image with the most common software installed, and keeping you image updated with the most common NIC drivers also make things easy. Also if you are the “family go-to IT guy”, you will quick learn to love a USB stick with a couple of customized images.

When we are talking WHS2011, to be honest, I don’t see a lot of reasons for creating images, unless you plan to build/sell systems. On the other hand, I always find a excuse and this time I decided to make a image of WHS2011 with my favorite screen capture software installed.

In the first part of the guide I will focus on creating the image. In order to use the image we also have to capture it and find some way of deploy it, I will do that in separate blog posts.

Here we go…

Installing WHS 2011 on “headless” hardware using AutoUnattend.xml

As a follow up on my previous post “Installing Server 2008 R2 unattended” here is a follow up on how to install “Windows Home Server 2011” on “headless” hardware.

WHS 2011 is a bit different when it comes to running setup.exe, and its therefore not enough to just put a AutoUnattend.xml in the root of the installation media. Also, for reasons I don’t know, Microsoft have decided to implement the possibility to automate the installation with use of a Cfg.ini file, in fact most of the “how-to” I found on the web is based around the Cfg.ini solution.

I think the Cfg.ini solution is okay, but having a mindset focused around xml files I decided to write a guide based on AutoUnattend.xml. Notice I have yet to find the (big) advantage compared to Cfg.ini, so for now the only “exclusive” settings I will do is around Internet Explore.

Let´s go!

 

Create a bootable ISO file with Oscdimg.exe

When you install the WAIK or OPK kit, you also automatically get Oscdimg.exe installed. It can be used from the WAIK/OPK cmd prompt.

Let´s say you have a copied the content of a Windows DVD to “C:\Work\MyCustomWinDVD”, made some changes, and are now ready to burn the .iso file. The syntax would be like this:

“oscdimg –bC:\Work\MyCustomWinDVD\boot\etfsboot.com -h -u2 -m –lMyCustomISO C:\Work\MyCustomWinDVD C:\Work\MyCustomISO.iso”

Options explanation:

-b - Specifies the location of a boot sector file, in this case found in the boot folder of the Windows DVD

-h - Include hidden files and directories

-u2 - Specifies that only the UDF file system is used

-m - Ignore the maximum (CD) size of a image

-l - Is used to label the iso file