Windows Deployment Services (WDS) - Issues after upgrade OS (Solved)

 

This is just a quick guide of something that happened me last week.

After upgrading a server from Windows 2012 to Windows 2019, I got some issues with Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

Basically, the service was up and running but no MMC console, no clients could find the boot file, etc.

After some research, I found out 2 easy command-lines that solved the issue:

1. Open an elevated command-line
   
   
2. Run the following command:
   wdsutil /Verbose /Progress /Uninitialize-Server
   wdsutil /Verbose /Progress /Initialize-Server /REMINST:"c:\RemoteInstall"
   
   
3. Reboot the server

Just keep in mind that you should point the /REMINST to the folder where you have your WDS installed.

WDS - Injecting VMware VMXNET3 Driver Error

I'm creating a new WDS + MDT infrastructure almost from scratch and I'm using VMware for deployment and image creation.
Because I'm using VMware VMXNET3 for network and VMware ParaVirtual SCSI for storage I needed to inject this 2 drivers on my Windows Deployment Servers (WDS) boot image for installing the created images.

Doing this on MDT when creating the boot images for the litetouch deployment has no issue, but for the boot.wim for installing images (extracted for the sources\boot.wim of Windows DVD) something goes wrong.
For some unknown although the VMware ParaVirtual driver gets easily inject, the VMXNET3 driver don't.
Not really investigated the reason, but has a workaround, follow this easy steps.

So what we're going to do it's to inject the drivers on boot.wim file using DISM:

1. First copy the file from a DVD/ISO (it's located on "...\sources\boot.wim") and copy it to a local drive (ex.: D:\Temp\)


2. Than you'll need to mount the WIM file:
   DISM /Mount-Image /ImageFile:D:\Temp\boot.wim /Index:2 /MountDir:D:\Temp\MountPoint


3. Now, you're ready to inject the VMware VMXNET3 Driver (or any other drivers), you just need to point to the *.inf file:
   DISM /Image:D:\Temp\MountPoint /Add-Driver /Driver:D:\Temp\Drivers\VMwareVMXNET3\vmxnet3ndis6.inf


4. Drivers injected, now unmount and commit changes:
   DISM /Unmount-Image /MountDir:D:\Temp\MountPoint /Commit

And you're done!

Now you just need to publish that boot.wim on your WDS and deploy images.

MVA - Windows 8.1 Deployment Jumpstart

I'm doing this one right now.
While there's no "jumpstart" for Windows 10, here's the one for Windows 8.1.

It's called "Windows 8.1 Deployment Jumpstart" and for everyone that's very familiar with Windows 7 deployment, it's a good refresh before heading up to Windows 10.

This course covers Windows 8.1 deployment end-to-end, talking about things like MDT, SCCM, litetouch, zerotouch, acronyms, dealing with drivers, creating master images, dynamic deployments, etc.

The hosts on this jumpstart are the "usual suspects":

• Michael Niehaus
• Johan Ardwidmark
• Mikael Nystrom
• Ben Hunter

To take this jumpstart from Microsoft Virtual Academy, just go here, and have fun!

MVA - Windows 8.1 Deployment Jumpstart

WDS and VMware Paravirtual SCSI Drivers

On a VMware VDI environment VMware Paravirtual SCSI driver it's recommended as the SCSI controller for your virtual machines.

In my environment the main template it's created using WDS (which also serves the physical machines).
By default the boot.wim (used to boot machines into WDS and deploy reference images) doesn't have the drivers necessary (or up-to-date) for a VMware environment. For example boot.wim doesn't come with the necessary network drivers for VMware VMXNET3 so this example will serve both for network or scsi drivers.

So, to boot up to WDS and be able to deploy successfully a reference image to a VMware virtual machine which is configured with a VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller, follow this steps:

Getting and injecting the drivers

• First of all, get a working virtual machine that already has a paravirtual controller installed and be sure that you have the latest VMware Tools installed
  
• Login to that vm and go to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\VMware Tools\"
  
• Copy "pvscsi" folder to your WDS server
  
• Now you just need to open your WDS console and inject the drivers like shown in the video bellow

• And your done.

You can now boot a VM with VMware paravirtual scsi controler.

Just keep in mind that if needed, you'll have to get the drivers from a x86 and a x64 machine.