DeployStudio - Trouble with Dual Boot

[Butler Trumpet]

I'm having troubles getting Windows to boot once I deploy my dual boot images. Here are some details

Server - iMac Early 2009 running 10.11.2 and current Mac Server
Deploy Studio Server - 1.7.1
Lab Computers - 15 inch MBP Late 2011 running Mac 10.11.3 and Windows 7 Pro 64bit. (All the lab machines are the same.. the machines I capture images from is identical to the machines I deploy to.)

The Mac image captures and deploys great. No issues.
The Windows image captures fine but when I deploy it, the machines no not boot. I get a black error screen: Windows Boot Manager - "Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause"

My Windows image is nothing more than a clean install using bootcamp assistant, and updates. I have done nothing else. Simply installed, ran updates, captured the image.

Is there something I'm missing?

 

[ZMacintosh]

do the Macs need to be prepped in Boot Camp? in the past they needed the MBR to allow the installation of a Windows partition..

 

[Butler Trumpet]

do the Macs need to be prepped in Boot Camp? in the past they needed the MBR to allow the installation of a Windows partition..

Maybe I'm not positive of what you're asking - but I did use the Boot Camp assistant to partition the drive before I installed Windows. Is that what you're getting at? Or, are you saying I need to do something to Windows itself to allow it to be captured and deployable? Thanks

 

[ZMacintosh]

what i mean is the individual macs (MacBooks) need to be partitioned/prepped by boot camp otherwise any deployment of windows to a mac will not properly install or work.

while the source iMac has been properly boot camp partitioned/prepared, the client machines need to also be prepared with BC.

 

[Butler Trumpet]

what i mean is the individual macs (MacBooks) need to be partitioned/prepped by boot camp otherwise any deployment of windows to a mac will not properly install or work.

while the source iMac has been properly boot camp partitioned/prepared, the client machines need to also be prepared with BC.

Thats not true... Deploy Studio is built to image new machines fresh out of the box to dual boot Mac / PC. The workflow I built first partitions the drive to HFS and NTFS and pushes out a .dmg for the Mac side and an ntfs.gz for Windows. (I think... I'm not in my office in front of the server right now... it might be dmg.ntfs.gz)

Anyway... I know that I don't need to set up Boot Camp manually on each machine first.

 

[DJLC]

Have you tried running sysprep under Windows prior to capturing the image?

I've never used DeployStudio to deploy Windows images — only OS X — but I have set up and used a FOG server to capture and deploy images on our Dell machines (and I'm recently A+ certified). Windows won't deploy properly without first running SysPrep even on like hardware.

So I think what you'll want to do is install Windows + BootCamp + updates as you have done. Then, before rebooting the source Mac into the DS NetBoot set to capture the image, go to Start -> Run and type sysprep. You want to enter the OOBE and check the generalize box. This removes all info from the Windows install that is unique to the particular machine it was installed on. Once it's done and shuts down, boot into DS and capture the Windows image. Note that after deployment you will have to go through the Windows setup wizard again and enter license info on each imaged machine. You can install all necessary software (Office, browsers, antivirus) before running SysPrep; however, you should not join an Active Directory domain until after the image has been captured and deployed. The only way to automate this further would be to use a Windows server to manage licenses.

With that preparation done to the Windows image, DS *should* be able to successfully partition and deploy both the Mac and Windows images in a bootable state. AFAIK you are correct in stating that using BootCamp to create partitions is not necessary in this scenario; there has been false info in the past that the BC assistant "installs" or "enables" the BIOS emulation in Apple's EFI firmware, but in my experience this is not the case.

 

[Butler Trumpet]

Have you tried running sysprep under Windows prior to capturing the image?

I've never used DeployStudio to deploy Windows images — only OS X — but I have set up and used a FOG server to capture and deploy images on our Dell machines (and I'm recently A+ certified). Windows won't deploy properly without first running SysPrep even on like hardware.

So I think what you'll want to do is install Windows + BootCamp + updates as you have done. Then, before rebooting the source Mac into the DS NetBoot set to capture the image, go to Start -> Run and type sysprep. You want to enter the OOBE and check the generalize box. This removes all info from the Windows install that is unique to the particular machine it was installed on. Once it's done and shuts down, boot into DS and capture the Windows image. Note that after deployment you will have to go through the Windows setup wizard again and enter license info on each imaged machine. You can install all necessary software (Office, browsers, antivirus) before running SysPrep; however, you should not join an Active Directory domain until after the image has been captured and deployed. The only way to automate this further would be to use a Windows server to manage licenses.

With that preparation done to the Windows image, DS *should* be able to successfully partition and deploy both the Mac and Windows images in a bootable state. AFAIK you are correct in stating that using BootCamp to create partitions is not necessary in this scenario; there has been false info in the past that the BC assistant "installs" or "enables" the BIOS emulation in Apple's EFI firmware, but in my experience this is not the case.

Great to talk to an A+ person I had success using SysPrep then capturing and deploying... but I was trying to avoid having to set up a new user on each machine that I don't need and going through the OOBE stuff. Are you saying that if I run SysPrep, capture and deploy, then recapture the image (already having gone through SysPrep) that the image will deploy to more identical machines without having to SysPrep again? (Hope that makes sense)

I did have some success doing this... Built the windows image, captured it (no sysprep) and deployed it. It fails to boot and gets me to the Windows Boot Manager screen. I then restart from the windows install disc and repair. Then I capture the image again and it deploys fine. Weird?

 

[DJLC]

AFAIK no, you won't be able to sysprep, deploy, then re-capture and deploy the image after. The registry is going to grab unique identifiers from the hardware in the setup wizard (after install or after deployment of a sysprepped image), and if those change Windows will throw the boot error you've seen. The only way to get around that is to sysprep prior to deployment. I think there is a way to skip the user creation part of the setup wizard, but I'm not sure how.

Granted, it's Windows. Weird things can always happen! I did a lot of experimenting with different SysPrep settings when I was imaging our Dells, and although sometimes I was able to get it to work without, it only ever worked reliably with sysprep + OOBE + generalize.

 

[Butler Trumpet]

AFAIK no, you won't be able to sysprep, deploy, then re-capture and deploy the image after. The registry is going to grab unique identifiers from the hardware in the setup wizard (after install or after deployment of a sysprepped image), and if those change Windows will throw the boot error you've seen. The only way to get around that is to sysprep prior to deployment. I think there is a way to skip the user creation part of the setup wizard, but I'm not sure how.

Granted, it's Windows. Weird things can always happen! I did a lot of experimenting with different SysPrep settings when I was imaging our Dells, and although sometimes I was able to get it to work without, it only ever worked reliably with sysprep + OOBE + generalize.

Any idea why doing a repair and recapturing will let me deploy?