Month: September 2009

Microsoft Deployment Tool Kit 2010 Released

MDT 2010 has been released overnight.  This is the free OS image deployment product that will find its way onto a lot of networks to help people migrate to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  You can also deploy older operating systems.  It uses task sequences to allow you to graphically program the process of not only deploying an operating system but also drivers, patches, applications, etc.  Out of the box, the sequence templates are very powerful, e.g. you can migrate from XP to Windows 7 while restoring data, you can do clean builds and you can capture sysprepped builds.

I’ve done some documentation on MDT 2010 to help you get started.

According to the Springboard blog:

“Michael Niehaus did a great series of blog posts on most of the new features of MDT 2010.  You can review those posts here.

Please make sure you review the release notes for instructions on how to upgrade from MDT 2008 or one of the beta releases of MDT 2010 here”.

Follow Up From Unattended Installation Webcast

Thanks to David Gargan for trying to moderate – if only I hadn’t muted my speaker *embarrassed* I couldn’t hear David when he was moderating the question.

As promised, you can find the unattended answer file (autounattend.xml) for a silent installation of Windows 7 Professional here.  Just be sure to stick in a product key and change the regional settings to suit your organisation.

The webcast was recorded and is available here.  It’s around 47 minutes long.

Thanks to you folks who tuned in.  We’ll be back next week (better organised!) with a session on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and VMM 2008 R2.

 

Unattended Windows Installs

 
View more presentations from joe_elway.

Windows 7 Enterprise Edition 90 Day Trial

Stephen Rose has announced a highly desired trial program where you can get your hands on a 90 day evaluation copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.  This means you can check out the really uber-cool features that are only found in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions.  Enterprise is only available to those who have software assurance for the desktop (or MSDN/TechNet) so it’s been a bit of a chicken and egg situation on getting to play with it.  Thanks to Springboard, you get it for free and can use that trial in your decision making process on Software Assurance.

And it’s going to be really handy for anyone doing certification who doesn’t have TechNet or MSDN.

Please read the full post by Stephen.  There will be only so many downloads.  The eval lasts for 90 days.  You will have to wipe the system at the end of the 90 days.  Please only use this eval in a lab environment.