Slick Script solution for imagex DVD-based (or USB bootable-based) deployments

No worries dearest GSD blog friends.

I’ve been very busy, hard at work for the taxpayers of Texas who pay my salary, making sure they get the most bang-for-the-buck with their own hard-earned dollars.  Thank you kindly.

I’m also grounded on my primary system…the silly Gateway laptop.  Seems the DC plug fix about a year ago failed again in the past couple of months so now I’ve had to rig the laptop up on my desk…static-style…to keep it running.  Kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop.  However I’m not willing to invest another $250 in a 2nd solder repair.  So I’m negotiating with Lavie and doing some shopping/dream-system config-ing on the Dell site.  I’m bouncing back-n-forth between a Alienware system or a Studio 17 build.  I think the Alienware case is a bit cheezy for my tastes. I’m open to other suggestions as well. Looking around at $1,300 price point or so which still seems like a LOT of money to this penny-pincher.  Leaning to the Dell line as I’ve supported these at work for 10 years or so and they are very reliable and sturdy systems.  Loving my new Latitude E6400 system at work (though it is still running XP Pro).

Dream features:

Quad-core Intel i5 processor (or higher to 8 processor threads with an Intel i7 chip perhaps?), 6GB RAM, 500 GB SATA drive, 512-1GB video system. Blu-ray support and a true 1080 HD supported screen.  I really would hope to find a modular DC-plug solution such that if the jack fails, its not hard-mounted on the system-board.  This is a lot of fire-power but I do lots of virtualization and hope to crank up some higher-end digital video/photo processing work as well.  Besides…it may be the first chance I’ve had to actually design and select my very own laptop system, so as an investment, it makes sense to get something I really would be proud to use.

Only sticking thing is I have a pair of beautiful Samsung LCD screen monitors.  I’d love to find an internal video-card solution that would output to both, while still allowing use of the laptop monitor.  However I will probably have to consider a Matrox DualHead2Go: Three Monitors, One Laptop : The Matrox DualHead2Go type solution, which really wouldn’t be bad at all. (for self reference: Matrox Graphics - Products - Graphics eXpansion Module – DualHead2Go )

Anyway, I digress. On to this post’s “meat-n-potatoes”…

The Setup

As noted, our shop is beginning a round of system refreshes for our end users.  In the end we are looking at close to 1000+ systems.  Our sub 20-person team would be greatly challenged to deliver this so a vendor was contracted to assist.

The factory images are “fresh” but not out of the oven fresh.  So the vendor setup/migration times are running 2-4 hours per system.  I know. Right?  So one of the things we do to minimize migration time for our own techs are deploy the fresh-baked images I prepare for our systems.  These are fully updated with all MS and third-party software patches, as well as contain our own system tweaks that are done post-install.  As such we can deploy a system in less than 1 hour.

Typically we deploy the images using bootable USB HDD’s and manually feeding the disk-prep and image application commands manually.

I’ve always toyed with the idea of scripting the process but with close to ten different images, and different HDD system configurations it is a bit challenging.  So we’ve kept with the manual model for now.

One drawback is that if the techs aren’t paying attention to drive lettering in DiskPart, more than one has wiped the portable HDD they are serving the images from. Oops!

Imaging for the Vendor

However, we wanted to retain some control over the images provided to our vendor, and giving them the system images (2 system configurations at this point) on a HDD wasn’t a popular idea.  Luckily each image would fit on a DVD and handing out/collecting DVD’s is much easier than USB HDD…and much more durable.

So I did some research and came up with a slick scripted mix of command-line batch goodness, ImageX/Diskpart fun, and WinPE to boot; literally!

I found an elegant solution offered by Neil “Frawlz” Frawley on MS Windows Client TechCenter: Scripts to deploy imagex images.

He uses a series of batch files and a text file to automate the process.

I did have some issue with the version/commands offered in his 2007 version and the choices.exe file used at that time and the newer ones.  For lots of sources on additional “choices.exe” background check out this About choice.com and choice.exe page.

However, I eventually got it armed and working.

Construction

I did a stock WinPE 3.0 build in a winpe_x86 folder and added three additional folders under the “ISO” folder; “images”, “scripts”, and “tools”.

In the “images” folder I placed the WIM file for the particular system the DVD was designed for use in image deployment.

In the “scripts” folder I placed the “choice.exe” file I got working, a “deployimage_localimage.bat” file, a deployimage_networkimage” file, a ”diskpartcmds.txt” file and finally a “menu.bat” file.

The choice.exe file I used reports as 19.5 KB and dated 12/9/1994.  I have some more work to do on this but this one works for now.

Although pulling the WIM image file from the network or a USB drive could be supported, I’ve tweaked it at bit to just support the DVD-based local image disk prepping and imaging.

In the “tools” folder, just my “imagex.exe” file is present.

The menu.bat file consists of the following, slightly tweaked from Neil’s OEM script.  It is this batch file that is called once the PE reaches the CMD prompt.

Note: the blog template is doing some text-wrapping here so double check against Neil’s original and also copy/paste any actual batch scripts below into Notepad or your fav. text editor to ensure you get the full line formats.  Line-breaks in incorrect places can cause the processes to fail.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SOE DEPLOY SCRIPT
::
:: Language     Win32/MS-DOS compatible Batch File
::
:: Title menu.bat
::
:: Parent:     
::
:: Purpose:     Displays a menu in Windows PE to deploy an imagex image
::
:: Comments: UFD stands for USB Flash Drive
::
:: Author: Neil Frawley
::
:: Version: 1.0
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
@ECHO OFF

::VARIABLES
SET title=DEPLOY IMAGEX IMAGE MENU
SET script_dir=%0\..

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SECTION: Display Title
cls
ECHO %title%
ECHO.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SECTION: Menu
ECHO Press the number to select the option
ECHO.
ECHO 1) DEPLOY IMAGEX IMAGE, IMAGE ON UFD OR DVD
ECHO 2) DEPLOY IMAGEX IMAGE, IMAGE ON NETWORK SHARE -- not supported
ECHO.

%script_dir%\choice /C:12

ECHO.
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO :NETWORK
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO :LOCAL

:LOCAL
%script_dir%\deployimage_localimage.bat
goto END

:NETWORK
%script_dir%\deployimage_networkimage.bat
goto END

:END

Then the “deployimage_localimage.bat” file gets called up

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SOE DEPLOY SCRIPT
::
:: Language     Win32/MS-DOS compatible Batch File
::
:: Title deployimage_localimage.bat
::
:: Parent: menu.bat
::
:: Purpose:     Deploy an imagex image, with the image being on a UFD or DVD
::
:: Comments: UFD stands for USB Flash Drive
::  This script could be run from a CD instead of a DVD, but it is unlikely the imagex image will fit on a CD
::
:: Author: Neil Frawley
::
:: Version: 1.0
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
@ECHO OFF

::VARIABLES
SET title=DEPLOY IMAGEX IMAGE, IMAGE ON DVD OR UFD
SET script_dir=%0\..

SET diskpart_script=diskpartcmds.txt
SET local_drive=C:
SET image_name=imagenamehere.wim

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SECTION: Display Title
cls
ECHO %title%
ECHO.

ECHO Press the number to select the option
ECHO.
ECHO 1) I AM USING A DVD
ECHO 2) I AM USING A UFD -- not supported

ECHO.

%script_dir%\choice /C:12

IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO :UFD
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO :DVD

:UFD
SET tools_drive=E:
SET image_path=E:\images
ECHO WinPE run from UFD
GOTO :PREP

:DVD
SET tools_drive=D:
SET image_path=D:\images
ECHO WinPE run from DVD
GOTO :PREP

:PREP
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SECTION: Prepare hard-drive
ECHO **** PREPARE HARDDRIVE ****
ECHO.
%script_dir%\choice /N "diskpart will now wipe the contents of your hard-drive erasing all data. Do you wish to continue?"
IF ERRORLEVEL 2 GOTO :END
diskpart /s %script_dir%\%diskpart_script%

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SECTION: Apply Image to hard-drive
ECHO **** APPLY IMAGE ****
D:\tools\imagex.exe /apply D:\images\LatE6400_04-10.wim 1 C:\

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: SECTION: Reboot computer
ECHO We are now ready to reboot the computer to continue system setup; remove DVD and
pause
ECHO **** REBOOT ****
wpeutil reboot

:END

Were the imagenamehere.wim matches the filename of your image WIM file located in the “images” sub-folder.

You will notice the clever bit is the call to the disk preparation text file “diskpartcmds.txt” which is the following:

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
assign letter = C
format FS=NTFS quick
exit

You can pop over to the original link I provided to find the network imaging deployment batch file if you want.

Final Thoughts

Using an optical-based DVD source for the image does take a bit longer to access/copy the data rather than a portable HDD or flash-media based source.  So keep that in mind.  If you had a few 4-6 GB flash drives you could easily make them bootable and apply this solution to them instead.  DVD’s are relatively cheap and easy to make duplicates of.  And if one is damaged no biggie.  Plus you don’t have to worry about files getting overwritten!

I’m sure there are more sophisticated and elegant solutions.

Because you can “stack” images inside an imagex wim file, with some more work you could easily create a single wim file that could support multiple systems.  Then with some clever updates to the batch file and image-picker lines, you could call whichever image package you wanted from a single wim file.  Depending on how big your base image was and the add-on levels, it might not fit on even a DVD, but still, it would probably work out for an 8-16 GB flash drive; and be crazy-easy on a bootable USB HDD drive.

Pretty cool…

Claus V.