Well, I was in the process of blogging about it but Johan beat me to the punch and I am not about to go and make unnecessary work for myself . You can find his post about this topic here. http://www.deployvista.com/Default.aspx?tabid=70&EntryID=139

• Michael has blogged about it here in a 3 part series – Part 1 – Part 2 –  Part 3
• Johan has followed up with his part here – http://deployvista.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/132/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Both of these blog posts are excellent reads if you are unsure of how you should be managing your drivers for your organization.

When I tried to download the package from Microsoft I received and nice “Sorry, no results found for: downloads details aspx displaylang en FamilyID cd73a2c5 76c1 48b3 a366 156900bb9493”

A few weeks later I attended MMS 2010 (Microsoft Management Summit 2010) and wanted to see if this tool was available so I went right to the source. I spoke to one of the MDT developers and they confirmed that trace64.exe was in fact a System Center tool and they did not have permission to release it to the public and that is the reason that the MDT 2010 Healthcare package was removed from Microsoft’s download site.

So, you may be able to find this tool if you search the cockles of the Interweb, but it will be scarce until Microsoft officially releases this tool to the IT Pro community.

This freebie from Microsoft   and can be found at the following link.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=EE2A1D38-88A9-43B3-95BC-7E962F0B6030&displaylang=en 

Here is the table of contents to give you an idea of what is covered in this publication.

• Deployment Platform
• Planning Deployment
• Testing Application Compatibility
• Developing Disk Images
• Migrating User State Data
• Deploying Applications
• Preparing Windows PE
• Configuring Windows Deployment Services
• Using Volume Activation
• Deploying with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

Performing operation “import” on Target “Operating system”.

—————————————————————————————-
Unable to get information for WIM file \\server\share\path\Install.wim .

System.DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL ‘wimgapi.dll’: The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)

   at Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn.WIMGAPI.CreateFile(String wimPath, AccessFlags desiredAccess, Disposition creationDisposition, ActionFlags flagsAndAttributes, CompressionType compressionType, UInt32& result)

   at Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn.BDDWimFile..ctor(String wimPath, Boolean forUpdate)

   at Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn.ImportOperatingSystem.Import(String sourcePath, String directoryName, Boolean moveDirectory)

Import processing finished.
—————————————————————————————-

Even though the “C:\Program Files\Windows Imaging” path had been added to the system %PATH% environment variable the error still occurred.

This could be because windows had not read into memory the updated system %PATH% environment settings since Windows does this during Startup.  My initial reaction was to just copy the C:\Program Files\Windows Imaging\WIMGAPI.dll in the C:\Windows\System32 folder, which would have worked but is not an ideal solution in case of future updates to this file.

The easiest way to get through this error is to simply reboot your server so that the new variable is loaded into memory and that specific library can be found.

Understanding the concept of Application Bundles

If you are familiar with how application dependencies work in BDD or MDT on a normal application, then just picture an application with multiple dependencies that doesn’t install itself after all the dependencies have been installed. If you are not familiar with how application dependencies work then just think of an application bundle as a group of applications that will be installed in a specific order.

For those of you who have been using Jason Scheffelmaer’s “Roles Wizard” to deploy groups of applications you may want to look into replacing it by using Application Bundles. Keep in mind that using Roles do give you a bit more added control around configuration, packages and administrators, but it can be a challenge to re-integrate when you decide to ugrade MDT to a newer version or apply and update. If you are only worried about grouping Apps, then application bundles are the way to go as it is a much cleaner way to choose and install applications in the LTI wizard at time of deployment and it also retains the flexibility of configuring through your customsetting.ini or MDT database.

Creating an Application Bundle

 To create an application bundle, you must first have some applications added to your deployment share. Creating an Application bundle is very similar to adding an application.

1. In the Deployment Workbench, right click on Applications and choose New Application.

2. If you want create an Application, you should choose either of the top two options. However we want to choose the third option, Application Bundle and click Next.

3. Enter a name which you want the Application Bundle to have. For bundles, I do not use the Publisher, Version or Language feilds as they are not really relevant. By putting the full bundle name in the Application Name field, you are able to better format it with spaces and dashes for readability in the LTI wizard. Click Next.

4. Review your choices. Click Next.

5. The application will then be created and you should be presented with a summary screen. Click Finish.

6. Now you should see your application bundle in the Applications container. If you do not see it, refresh your screen by hitting F5 or clicking in Refresh in the right hand pane.

7. To add applications to your bundle, double click in the Application Bundle you just created, click over to the Dependencies Tab, and click add. You will be presented with a list of applications that you have already added to the Deployment Workbench.

8. Lastly, notice the Up and Down buttons in the dependencies tab. The order in which your applications appear in this list is the order they will be installed when you choose this bundle during your deployment.

I hope this post of helpful and feel free to post your comments or questions below.

DVD

A quick online search does not help as PowerShell is not available for download from the Microsoft site for Windows Server 2008. This is because it is included in the OS. Here are the instructions on how to install Powershell so that you may continue your setup of MDT 2010.

1. Click on Start, Server Manager.

2. Click continue on any UAC windows that appar.

3. On the left side of the Server manager, click on Features.

4. Then on the right side of the Server manager, click on Add Features

 5. Scroll down to Windows PowerShell, choose it  and click Next.

6. You will be presented with the roles, services and features you chose. Notice the warning about the possible need to restart your server. Click Install.

7. When the installation is complete you should be presented with the following message. Click Close.

8. You will now be able to access PowerShell from your Start Menu.

My goal is to document anything I think may benefit the IT Pro Community while focusing on Windows Operating System Setup and Deployment.

Please check back in the coming weeks as I progress with my research on deploying Windows 7 with MDT 2010.