Tips&Tricks – Trace and Analyze Windows Boot and Shutdown with Windows Performance Toolkit

Although most of us know Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for the..Deployment part, there is another great tool there called Windows Performance Toolkit.

This tool can help IT Administrators to analyze performance data in a very practical way using a graphical user interface that really simplifies reading the collected traces.

It’s specially useful when we need to troubleshooting boot or shutdown times.

After installing the tool it’s super easy to start using it to analyze a machine.

Here are some simple command-lines to startup (attention that all commands are case sensitive):

Boot Tracing
xbootmgr –trace boot –traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER –resultPath C:\YourPath

Shutdown Tracing
xbootmgr –trace shutdown –noPrepReboot –traceFlags BASE+CSWITCH+DRIVERS+POWER –resultPath C:\YourPath

The above command will generate a the trace files that you can analyze to troubleshoot for example a long boot, and see if the issue is caused by any driver, software, service, etc.

For a very nice, complete and very very informative article about Windows Performance Toolkit please read the following post from MSFN website:
MSFN - Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues

Win10 Deploy– Microsoft TechNet - Windows 10 Deployment and Management Lab Kit

Here’s a nice option if you want to quickly start testing Microsoft Windows 10 deployment without all the troubles and hurdles of creating your environment.
Microsoft TechNet gives you a 32GB virtual lab with all that you need.

This is specially nice to test before creating your final production environment.

In this virtual lab you’ll get:

• Windows 10 Enterprise v1703 (aka Creators Update)
• System Center 2012 Configuration Manager 1702 (aka SCCM)
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit for Windows 10 v1703 (aka Windows ADK)
• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit v8443 (aka MDT)
• Microsoft Application Virtualization 5.1 (aka App-V)
• Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring 2.5 Service Pack 1 (aka MBAM)
• Windows Server 2016
• Microsoft SQL

More information about this lab kit can be found here:
Windows 10 deployment and management lab kit

To download the lab kit directly:
Windows 10 Deployment and Management Lab Kit

Windows 10 ADK v1607 - WSIM Changes

With the introduction of the fresh Microsoft Windows 10 ADK v1607, there are also change to Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) and Unattend.xml files.

To a complete list of changes, here's the MSDN article:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/mt750416(v=vs.85).aspx

Windows 10 ADK v1607 Available

Following the this early August release of Windows 10 v1607, Microsoft also made available a new version of Windows 10 ADK (Windows Assessement and Deployment Kit) v1607.

Grab the new version from the download link:
Microsoft Windows 10 ADK v1607


Remember that, like other versions of Windows 10 ADK, therer's no in-place upgrade, so you'll have to uninstall the previous versions you've install first.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 2 v6.3.8330 Available

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 2 v6.3.8330 it's now available through Microsoft Download Center.

This new version it's primarily a "quality release" with now major features.
Here's a summary of the changes in this update:

• Security and cryptographic related improvements:
• Relaxed permissions on newly created deployment shares (still secure by default, but now also functional by default)
• Creating deployment shares via Windows PowerShell adds same default permissions
• Updated hash algorithm usage from SHA1 to SHA256
• Includes the latest Configuration Manager task sequence binaries
• Enhanced user experience for Windows 10 in-place upgrade task sequence
• Enhanced split WIM functionality
• Fixed OSDJoinAccount account usage in UDI scenario
• Fixed issues with installation of Windows 10 language packs
• Various accessibility improvements
• Monitoring correctly displays progress for all scenarios including upgrade
• Improvements to smsts.log verbosity

Download MDT 2013 Update 2 v6.3.8330 here:

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 2 v6.3.8330

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013 (MDT) Update 1 Available

So, after Windows ADK for Windows 10 and Windows 10 ADMX Template got available, it's now finally available MDT 2013 Update 1!

The Microsoft free tool for operating systems deployment was made available 2 days ago.
MDT is the recommended process and toolset for automating desktop and server system deployments and includes the following benefits:

• Unified tools and processes, including a set of guidance, for deploying desktops and servers in a common deployment console
• Reduced deployment time and standardized desktop and server images

Some of the key features for MDT 2013 Update 1 are:

• Support for the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 10
• Support for deployment and update of Windows 10
• Support for System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 with Windows ADK for Windows 10

Go ahead and follow the download link below:

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 1

Windows ADK for Windows 10 Available

With the general launch of Windows 10 worlwide, Microsoft also launched the final release of Windows ADK for Windows 10.

Although there's not yet a final version of Microsot Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 1, the product team it's working hard to get it available during August.

To download the Windows ADK for Windows 10, follow the link bellow and scroll down to "Customize, assess, and deploy Windows on your hardware" section:
Download kits and tools for Windows 10

MS Windows ADK RC for Windows 10 Available (info updated)

Like promised, here's an update to MS Windows ADK RC for Windows 10 testing.

So far so good! I was able to finally boot from WDS with the boot images created with MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview.

My setup was MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview and Windows ADK for Windows 10 Technical Preview and what I've done:

• Uninstall Windows ADK for Windows 10 Technical Preview
• Reboot
• Install Windows ADK RC for Windows 10
• Open MDT and updated deployment share regenerating all boot images
• Published the newly generated boot images into WDS
• All done!

Hope you're able to test this too!

MS Windows ADK RC for Windows 10 Available

For those early adopters and deployment fans like me, here's good news.
I'm finally testing the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 1 Preview to deploy Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise Insider Preview 10074. I was having a little bit of issues because I was using a previous version of ADK , but now Microsoft launched Microsoft Windows ADK RC for Windows 10,
I believe this is compatible with build 10074. Already downloading this and hope to get some good news later on.

For everyone interested in downloading this release candidate of Microsoft Windows ADK just remember you can install directly from the web or download the offline installer like shown on the image above.

Here are the links:
Windows ADK RC for Windows 10 (direct download)
Windows ADK RC for Windows 10 (more info)

Windows Deployment - DISM - List injected drivers in table format

Have you ever needed to verify which drivers you've injected on your WIM file?
Ever been asked to get a list of the injected drivers for a report and needed to take a lot of time just creating tables and formatting the information for reporting?

Well, here's a nice tip that can save you a lot of time!

Follow these steps:

1. Open Windows ADK command-prompt as Administrator


2. Mount your WIM file on disk, for example:
   DISM /Mount-Wim /WimFile:D:\ISOS\Win81\sources\install.wim /index:1 /MountDir:D:\MountPoint


3. Now, just use the above command to get all inject drivers and format the output:
   DISM /image:D:\MountPoint /Get-Drivers /format:table

And there you go! Nice format list of injected drive on your WIM! :)

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013 Update 1 Preview Available

With the probability of Windows 10 to be launched this summer, IT starts to think about it and should be prepared to it's deployment as soon as possible.

Because creating a new reference/gold image of a new operating system can bring new issues and challenges it's important to get to know the OS, the new features and the deprecated features also.
This makes it easier for IT guys to orchestrate the OS deployment and to know what to install, what not to install, which phase to apply that configuration, etc.

So, to start planning and testing, Microsft made available a month ago Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013 Update 1 (MDT 2013 Update 1) Preview.
Obviously take in count the word "Preview". This release it's meant to "lab only" and to submit suggestions and bugs to product team (Enterprise Client Management), through Microsoft Connect website.

I'll probably talk a little more about this new release further this month, but for now, here's the official information.

What's new with MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview:

• Support for the Windows 10 Technical Preview (LTI only) and the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 10 Technical Preview
• Split WIM support for UEFI media scenarios
• Completely revised Windows version logic including changes from string to integer comparison ("10" !> 6 but 10 > 6)  and a new ZTIUtility function, GetMajorMinorVersion
• Minor revisions  to Deployment Workbench console interface

If you want to try MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview and give feedback, you should follow these steps:

• Download the installer from the MDT Connect Portal.
• Download the prerequisite Windows ADK for Windows 10 Technical Preview from the Windows Insiders program. See this post for further information on how to obtain it.
• Try MDT 2013 Update 1 Preview and submit bugs, suggestions and feedback via Connect Portal

Notes:

New members must first join the MDT Group of the Client Enterprise Management program on Connect

Deploy Windows 8 with MDT

Here's a very quick but helpful video about how to install Microsoft Windows 8 with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Update 1 (MDT).

In this video there's all you need to understand the basic steps to create a Litetouch installation.