My name is Andrew Barnes an IT Professional from the UK and a moderator on the Official Microsoft Scripting Guys forum. Check my vcard here.
My blog is focused around deployment and infrastructure automation. It is designed to help both beginners and experts alike with my guides, walkthoughs, links and videoblogs. Keep watching, follow me on Twitter or Facebook and email me at 
. For MDT support questions, post a new topic in the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit forum.
Scriptimus Prime.
Scriptimus Ex Machina 
i read a lot of your posts all of them helped me a lot concerning mdt and xp deployment
but i have a small problem i can’t get mdt 2010 U1 to make xp sp3 install East Asian languages support as i am trying to install the arabic Saudi Arabia but no use any help!!? thank you very much for your posts
LikeLike
My post on XP regional settings should help. It’s here. You can use the technet links to discover the region codes for your country.
LikeLike
Andrew,
I do apologize for copying and pasting information from your site and posting it on my site. I have made the changes and re-posted. Again, I do apologize that article was support to be in draft because I was still testing it out in my environment and wanted to make changes before posting.
LikeLike
It is cool to find your blog! Thank you, for you work. I found very much interesting informations about MDT, this is my favorite tool, whit your information a can upgrate my deploy share.Thank you again!
IT man from Russia, Alexander.
LikeLike
Your blog is amazing! Great work and very much appreciated! I haven’t found another site that covers MDT with as much detail and focus as yours. Thank you!
LikeLike
Thank you for all of your posts especially Hydration!
LikeLike
Hi Andrew, In WDS its pretty simple to pre-stage PC’s by populating the netboodguid attribute of a computer object with the UUID or MAC of the PC. What I’d like to achieve is a pre-stage object in AD and use MDT 2012 in WDS 2012 mode for deployment with the result of the newly imaged machine being domain joined with the correct computer name taken from the pre-staged object
LikeLike
I don’t believe there is any way of targeting pre-staged machines apart from using the deployment database.
LikeLike
Hi Andrew,
Since my post I have discovered the MDT web services on Codeplex. There are some great methods in the web service one of which will fetch the computer name from AD based on the UUID of the PC which is read in during the initial gather.
Now I’ve just got to get Multicast working….. 🙂
Cheers
Dave
LikeLike
I was hoping to make use of your expertise with custom mdt scripting in helping to troubleshoot a problem I am encountering with a customized task sequence. The original post is located here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/mdt/thread/2291bcba-bb9e-44bf-8eda-c0bbf0f993bf
Thanks!
LikeLike
Answered. And you’re welcome mate.
LikeLike
Hi Andrew
I have set my keyboard settings ets like you post https://scriptimus.wordpress.com/2011/04/16/mdt-2010-regional-settings/ in mdt 2012 using a TS with an unaltered unattend file .but both Windows 7 and 8 are failing to install correctly. I am sure they are both failing because of the unatteded.xml. When its applying the unattended.xml using DISM it can take about 4 minutes which i am sure is too long.
Have you ever has this problem? .
SkipLocaleSelection=YES
UILanguage=en-GB
UserLocale=en-GB
KeyboardLocale=en-GB
SkipTimeZone=YES
TimeZoneName=GMT Standard Time
LikeLike
To test this, try creating a new Task Sequence. This will generate a new unattend.xml. If the same delay happens then it must be something else.
LikeLike
Hey Andrew. Good blog. We currently use SCCM to deploy and we want an automated way to deploy while setting the local admin account password on each machine to something unique. I’m looking for a way to script this in a way that can use a variable like the host name appended to something else for each machine. Like for instance if the host name was TESTPC1, the local admin password would be mypasstestpc1. For a machine named TESTPC2, mypasstestpc2. Something of that sort. Have you heard of any way of doing this?
LikeLike
Sure, you could generate a custom script easily. Remember, the password would need to be changed at the very end as SCCM/MDT will use the admin account to log on.
LikeLike
Hey Andrew, I am currently in the process of updating my companies imaging process for direct access as the previous person wanted to do this manually. I found your posts about adding groups to computers and have run into some problems. I think it is probably a simple issue but I haven’t played with wsf scripts in a while and am not sure what I am doing wrong.
-I have added a command line task:cscript.exe “%SCRIPTROOT%\ZTIAddMember.wsf” and set it to run as a administrator on my domain.
-I have added the ZTIAddMember.wsf file to the scripts folder on the share.
-I have edited the rules to include: ADGroups=LDAP://CN=DA Clients,OU=DirectAccess,OU=Groups,DC=xxx,DC=xxxx,DC=net
-I have checked permissions and also added the ztiaddmember.wsf to the lticopyscripts.wsf
I feel that I am missing something but can’t put my finger on it. I can give you screen shots if needed.
LikeLike
hi there i was wondering if you could help. i am using mdt 2012 to deploy windows 7 –
It’s all working fine, however i have two issues and i don’t know where to start. 1st is that I would like to pull the names from a database / file I know you can use MS SQL and setup an database and link it up with the task sequence in mdt 2012… essentially I want to pre-stage the computer names so when the pc are re-imaged they get the correct name .
Secondly I want to move the imaged computers into to the correct OU
I would appreciate if you ca help
LikeLike
The database can take care of all that for you, easily. There’s a link to a video series here on setting up the database. It’s really easy to set up and just as easy to use.
LikeLike
Hi Andrew I’ve been following your blog and it’s helped me tremendously in setting up our MDT 2013 deployment. Thank you!
I am imaging some older model Acers (Veriton N281G) via USB bootable drive and MDT 2013. In this model in particular; the keyboard and mouse does not work once the Wizard box pops up. The BIOS does indeed recognize it and I’m able to select the USB bootable drive, but unable to move the mouse or use the keyboard once the wizard appears. All other models including HP and Lenovo work without any issues.
I’ve tried different keyboards/mice including PS2 and 2 different KVM’s. I have a separate folder in the Out-of-Box Drivers folder for this particular model and I’ve imported numerous usb drivers as well as taken them all out and tried without success. I’ve tried LiteTouchPE_x64 and x86.
Any suggestions? Unfortunately, we have many of these Acers in our Exam rooms with Windows XP and I’m needing to upgrade them ASAP. If it were up to me, I would just replace them all…
LikeLike
Sorry I’ve never seen that. But if you have the drivers you can prime them in winpe.
LikeLike
Any chance that you will update the MDT skipping deployment tutorials for MDT 2013?
LikeLike
It’s pretty much the same, unless I’ve missed something. 🙂
LikeLike
hi Andrew
I recently start learning MDT and found your web site really useful
Thanks for such great work for community
LikeLike
Thanks Praz. Glad it was helpful.
LikeLike
Hi Andrew,
this is a fantastic resource, I just working with MDT and wondered if you have section on best practice for creating an image. Ive been reading about think images, etc.. and like the idea of deploying a bare bone OS then deploying the apps. The only downfall to this is finding the silent intalls commands to the various applications. It appears you have to have packaging skills to use MDT. ( I just being funny)
LikeLike
Hi Nick,
I’ve not written a Best practices. But to answer your question. I would use a thick image during a large scale deployment when time is important. The rest of the time I would use a thin image as each of the components would change on a regular basis(Like Java, Adobe, office patches etc). Try to think of each component as modular and manage each part separately.
LikeLike