Alberto Ortega’s Blog

Windows 7 RC has a little bug regarding Image capturing, it is not big deal but you might have an interrupted sysprep process if you don’t take this into consideration. This is reported and will be fixed on the RTM build, for now you can follow this guide to succesfully get a .WIM image from a Windows 7 RC model machine:

1. Open a command prompt as Administrator.
2. Navigate to c:\windows\system32\sysprep
3. (bug in RC) Make sure the “wmpnetwk.exe” process is not running and the “Windows Media Player Networking Sharing” service is disabled. If not a problem related to the drmv2clt.dll (Digital Rights Management DLL) will abort the sysprep execution.
4. Run sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /reboot

Now begins the capture process:

1. (~5 mins) Sysprep will go though the foillowing phase
   1. Processing cleanup phase Sysprep plugins
   2. Processing generalize phase Sysprep plugins
2. (~5 mins) Reboot (be aware of this reboot to capture the image, if not you will need to re-run Sysprep)
   1. Press F12 (or manually configure the BIOS to boot from the LAN)
   2. Press F12 again to initiate a session the PXE Server.
   3. Select the Image Capture option as you will be generating a .WIM file for later upload to the MDT Server
   4. Once in the image capture wizard
      1. Choose a name for your image
      2. Capture locally to avoid networking issues and maker sure you will get the .WIM image
      3. Choose a name for the file on the local disk and make sure you specify a .WIM extension for the file
3. (~70 mins) Be patience go somewhere else while the .WIM generation tooks place.
4. (~10 mins) First boot: Now boot again the model workstation and you will get a 1st boot experience.

Resources

1. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/8f5002e1-95b4-47bf-b031-4b72b3eb388a
2. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/c469805c-98af-4bb2-9655-c86c294470a9
3. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744330(WS.10).aspx