I need to prepare a Windows 7 image with drivers for multiple systems (Lenovo laptops).
I currently have an image prepared on one laptop type but need to grab the drivers appropriate for the other laptop types as well to ensure that it works on all systems.
From what I can tell, the procedure will be:
- create a boot CD with imageX
- take a .wim image prepared on the first type of systems
- take .wim images from the other systems
- mount the other images in WAIK
- extract the drivers from the other images
- inject the drivers into the first .wim
- boot a system with the boot CD and redeploy the updated .wim image into the Windows partition
- take an image of the drive with usual imaging tools
This all seems a little too convoluted, but I'm willing to do it to get the proper drivers into the image.
This is (seemingly) necessarily complicated by having more than one OS on the disk image.
Am I on the right track?
Best Answer
Since you have standardized on Lenovo systems, you will definitely want to look at two things:
Both methods are documented in this guide from Lenovo.
Lenovo driver packs for SCCM
These can be downloaded from http://download.lenovo.com/express/sccm.html
They are simple self extracting archives, with all the drivers already in the proper .inf format. Nice and easy, just download the packs for all your models, point Dism at that folder with the /recurse switch, and you're set.
So why did I even list another method? Because Lenovo hates us.
For what it's worth, drivers are the main reason I've convinced my work to go exclusively with Dell for laptops. I used to love Lenovos, but Dell has ready to go driver packs for ALL their systems. Just extract them and import them into your deployment tool (Dism, WDS, MDT, SCCM, etc).
ThinkVantage Update Retreiver
For a long time this has been the only method that works. For some models of laptops that is still the case.
The original intended purpose of the update retriever is to have your own local mirror for use with Lenovo's system update tool, or to push out driver and lenovo software updates. However, a lot of people skip the Lenovo way of doing things, and add the drivers to whatever deployment methods they are already using. Lenovo's ThinInstaller is their way of doing it.
The basic procedure for the way you are doing it now is:
This is a lot of steps. But it's MUCH faster than mounting each image and extracting drivers. It also ensures you get the newest versions of the drivers.
Other things to improve on and speed up deployment
Adding drivers to the WIM, deploying the WIM to a system, then capturing an image of it sounds like a lot of extra work to me. I'm not quite clear if you are making different images because the systems have different hardware, or different configurations of software. If the former, you only need one image. If the latter, you still need multiple images.
Either way, there are faster ways of doing it.
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit is Microsoft's free method of automating deployment - it has the advantage that you can adjust settings and software installed so you don't have to make separate images, just a big list of features and software to apply to a specific type of machine. Unfortunately, it has a bit of a learning curve, and I haven't had time to fully figure out how best to implement it.
Windows Deployment Services is a role for Server 2008+. It works quite well, and is what I currently use to reimage machines. The basic process is this:
Both MDT and WDS are free (or at least included with a windows server OS), so I would check them both out. WDS is easy to setup and get going in a day or two. MDT takes more time, but is more powerful - I think you end up doing a lot more work setting it up initially, but a lot less work maintaining it afterwards. Since this isn't a super critical role, I have in the past installed windows server on a regular desktop and setup WDS. Works just fine, and you can try windows server for awhile (180 days?) before buying to make sure it will work out for you.