Sign in
 
HomeLibraryWikiLearnGalleryDownloadsSupportForumsBlogs
Resources for IT Professionals >
> 
> 
> 
Apply unattend.xml

Answered Apply unattend.xml

  • Monday, June 18, 2012 9:06 AM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    I run a standard client sequence with a Win7 image I captured previously. I am using MDT 2012 so I thought I would use the "no setup files needed" feature.

    I have noticed that at the end of copying the image to my client the task Apply unattend.xml starts and it takes a while. I didn't have this on my image when I was using MDT 2010 but I suppose it is because I could only install the image using the setup files.

    As the Apply unattend.xml step takes a long while I was wondering how I can reduce or eliminate this time.

    Any suggestion is welcomed.

     

All Replies

  • Monday, June 18, 2012 2:53 PM
     
     Answered
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Hi,

    You shouldn't do anything regarding this message. The reason you're seeing this is the following.

    (A bit more background information would be helpfull though in general).

    I presume that this is a new deploymentshare, or at least a deploymentshare where any imported OS that's Windows 7 has been imported without setup files. The behaviour you're discribing occurs because the Windows image is now applied using ImageX instead the setup.exe. Previously when you were used to seeing the Windows installation being executed with setup.exe there was a step named "Installing Updates". This step generally also took a while to execute since it was injecting the drivers that matched the system and were copied onto the HDD, into the just deployed Windows image. However since it's a process of the general Windows setup, you might have not really noticed this delay.

    Since Imagex is now used to deploy Windows 7 instead (since there are no setup files present in the DS), if this "Apply unattend.xml" step did not occur, your newly applied Windows image would not contain any drivers at all. The more drivers that are required for a specific machine, the longer this will take, but for that same matter the longer it also would have taken while running the regular setup.exe, as they do exactly the same thing.

    My personal experience is that using ImageX to deploy Windows 7 provides an overall quicker installation time compared to the setup.exe method, shaving off a couple of minutes. Due to an incompatibility between the MDT2012 with ADK (WAIK/OPK replacement for Windows 8) and Windows 7 setup, in a future release of MDT the default behaviour of installing will be using ImageX.

    Kind regards,

    Stephan Schwarz

    If one of these posts answered your question or issue, please click on "Mark as answer".

    My Blog | Twitter: @Schwarz_Stephan | MCTS, MCITP, MCC.
    How to configure Windows RE/OEM Recovery Partition with MDT

    • Marked As Answer by Mazurca Tuesday, June 19, 2012 9:43 AM
    •  
     
  • Tuesday, June 19, 2012 9:43 AM
     
     
    Sign In to Vote
    0

    Stephan,

    many thanks for your reply. I only wanted to make sure that I was doing the right thing.

    Thanks, Nic.