what is Windows SIM and how can I use it ? Windows System Image Manager

[patris1]

http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/575-what-is-windows-sim-and-how-can-i-use-it/

What is it ?

Windows System Image Manager is a tool for editing XML files used in the deployment of Vista/Windows Server 2008. These XML files are sets of instructions telling Windows Setup how to proceed and install itself, in the past we would have edited such files (sysprep.inf, unattend.txt) using notepad, but now Windows has grown up and so has its' tools.

You can use Windows SIM to create an answer file (autounattend.xml or unattend.xml) that partitions and formats a disk before installing Windows, you can create an XML file for an unattended install of Vista/Server 2008, and then automate the process by copying the finished AutoUnattend.xml file to either the root of a USB key or the root of a Windows Vista (or Server 2008) DVD. When Windows setup starts it will query these locations if present for the file and if it finds the file it will use the settings found within.

Tip:

If you create an unattend.xml file using Windows System Image Manager (SIM) and you want to allow users to install Windows Vista with no user interaction, you would need to rename the file to autounattend.xml and copy it to the root of a USB Flash Drive.



How do I get it ?

Windows SIM is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) so if you want it then you'll need to install the WAIK first. Note: this guide is aimed at customising Windows Vista. If you want to use Windows SIM to customise Windows 7 deployments then you'll need The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 which you can download here.



As you can see from the screenshot above, there are 5 main areas to Windows SIM, and they are as follows:

1. distribution share (may contain $OEM$ Folders, Out-of-Box Drivers or the Packages directories, requires at least one of these dirs to be recognised as a DS)
2. windows image
3. answer file
4. properties
5. messages

When you start Windows SIM for the first time however, the above panes will all be blank as in the screenshot below




How can I use it ?

Before you can use Windows SIM you are going to need your Windows Vista DVD or your Windows Server 2008 DVD, so locate them and once done copy the contents of one of them to a folder locally.

eg: c:\source\w2k8dvd

Now that you have a local copy of the DVD, you can use that as your Windows source (we need to point number 2 above to the install.wim file on the local source). So let's do that, right click on Select a Windows Image and choose Select Windows Image



browse to the Local directory which contains a copy of your Windows DVD and choose the sources directory within there, select the install.wim file



select an Image from the DVD, in my case I'm using a Windows Server 2008 64bit source.... I select Longhorn ServerStandard from the choices available



Once done, you may get prompted to create a Catalog file, answer Yes. The catalog file contains descriptions of what components and packages the image contains so may take a few minutes to generate. After the Catalog file is created, our Windows Image pane will list some new nodes called Components and Packages and you can expand them to see what lies within.




create New Answer File

Now that we have our Windows Image loaded, we will want to configure it so in the Answer File pane, right click and choose New Answer File



Now that we have a new answer file we can start to configure it, and to do so we need to add components or packages from the Windows Image pane to our Answer file, and then we can make changes to the options we have chosen.




Set Regional and Language options

In the Windows Image pane, expand the Components node and select Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE, in my example I have a amd64_ infront of Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE because I am using a 64bit image. If you are using 32 bit, yours will say X86_Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE

right click on the option and choose Add Setting to Pass 1 Windows PE



In the Answer File section, expand the newly added setting and enter en-US as the value for Input Locale, System Locale,, UILanguge, UILanguageFallback and UserLocale



expand the SetupUILanguage option beneath, and add the en-US value to the UILanguage option



Validate our changes

We have now created an answer file and configured our language and regional options, it is important to understand that you can easily make mistakes creating an answer file, and Windows SIM has a checking tool built in to verify your changes, so to do that click on Validate answer File and look in the Messages pane for any messages.





In addition to the above you may want to do the following actions

how can I join a Domain using Windows SIM
how can I configure the hard disc using Windows SIM
how can I install drivers using windows SIM
how can I change computername using Windows SIM
how can I add the product key using Windows SIM
how can I edit the EULA, FullName and Organization settings using Windows SIM
how can I decide which version of Windows get's installed using Windows SIM



Troubleshooting

Technet Resources > http://technet.micro...y/cc766073.aspx

if something is not going as planned, you can browse the C:\Windows\ and C:\Windows\Panther folders for log files, in particular the setupact.log and setuperr.log files

pressing left Shift and F10 together will bring up a command prompt during the Windows setup stage if you wish to view the files using notepad.



Some errors you may encounter:

Quote
Windows setup could not install one or more boot-critical drivers



this will happen at boot time and may occur after you have added new drivers to your USB key or DVD (or network share..), verify that the drivers are not causing a problem with network connectivity, for example if you've added a 3G modem driver and the error occurs, then you'll have to add that driver at a later stage of the installation

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موضوعات مشابه:

• windows system center بخصوص configuration manager چیست
• Step by Step Creating and Maintaining a Windows 7 Image using Virtual PC on Windows 7
• Creating and Maintaining a Windows 7 Image using Virtual PC on Windows 7
• image from windows 2003 server
• روش image گرفتن از windows 2000 advanced server

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[patris1]

Add component to Answer File

start up Windows SIM and select Microsoft-Windows-Setup from the choices in the Components section of Windows Image. Expand DiskConfiguration and then right-click on Disk and choose Add Setting to Pass 1 windowsPE



set the DiskID to "0" in properties



Note: if you try to deploy and get an error message stating Windows could not create a partition on disk 0. The error occurred while applying the unattend answer file's <DiskConfiguration> setting. Error Code:0x80004005 then set the WillWipeDisk to true




Partition the hard disc

Now we want to partition the hard disk to be 40GB in size so add the Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\CreatePartitions\Crea tePartition component to the windowsPE pass.



set the properties to order=1, size=40000 and type=primary




Mark as active and format with NTFS

Add the Microsoft-Windows-Setup\DiskConfiguration\Disk\ModifyPartitions\Modi fyPartition node to the windowsPE pass



edit your settings like this, make sure to set order and partition ID or this will not work...




Tell Windows where to install to

Now that we've got our hard disc sorted we need to tell Windows where to install to, so add the Microsoft-Windows-Setup\ImageInstall\OSImage\InstallTo node to the windowsPE configuration pass



set the DiskID to 0 and PartitionID to 1





Add more partitions

If you want to add more partitions you can do so as follows:

Right-click on CreatePartitions and choose Insert New CreatePartition



when the properties screen appears, fill in the values for Order, Size and Type (do not set Extend to True if Size is set to a value)



Now that we have created our new partition, you need to modify it, so right click on ModifyPartitions and choose Insert New Modify Parition




make your changes to the properties paying close attention to the Order and PartitionID values otherwise the deployment won't work



validate your answer file by clicking on the validate button

here's some sample (working) code from an XML file i've made, in this sample it makes 3 partitions, C, D, and E, C is for the Os, D for Data and E for other.

<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
                        <DiskConfiguration>
                                <Disk wcm:action="add">
                                        <ModifyPartitions>
                                                <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Active>true</Active>
                                                        <Format>NTFS</Format>
                                                        <Label>OS</Label>
                                                        <Order>1</Order>
                                                        <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
                                                        <Letter>C</Letter>
                                                </ModifyPartition>
                                                <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Format>NTFS</Format>
                                                        <Label>data</Label>
                                                        <Letter>D</Letter>
                                                        <Order>2</Order>
                                                        <PartitionID>2</PartitionID>
                                                </ModifyPartition>
                                                <ModifyPartition wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Format>NTFS</Format>
                                                        <Label>other</Label>
                                                        <Letter>E</Letter>
                                                        <Order>3</Order>
                                                        <PartitionID>3</PartitionID>
                                                </ModifyPartition>
                                        </ModifyPartitions>
                                        <DiskID>0</DiskID>
                                        <CreatePartitions>
                                                <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Order>1</Order>
                                                        <Size>40000</Size>
                                                        <Type>Primary</Type>
                                                </CreatePartition>
                                                <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Order>2</Order>
                                                        <Size>30000</Size>
                                                        <Type>Primary</Type>
                                                </CreatePartition>
                                                <CreatePartition wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Order>3</Order>
                                                        <Size>100</Size>
                                                        <Type>Primary</Type>
                                                </CreatePartition>
                                        </CreatePartitions>
                                        <WillWipeDisk>true</WillWipeDisk>
                                </Disk>
                        </DiskConfiguration>
                        <ImageInstall>
                                <OSImage>
                                        <InstallTo>
                                                <DiskID>0</DiskID>
                                                <PartitionID>1</PartitionID>
                                        </InstallTo>
                                        <InstallFrom>
                                                <MetaData wcm:action="add">
                                                        <Value>Windows Longhorn SERVERENTERPRISE</Value>
                                                        <Key>/IMAGE/NAME</Key>
                                                </MetaData>
                                        </InstallFrom>
                                </OSImage>
                        </ImageInstall>
                        <UserData>
                                <AcceptEula>true</AcceptEula>
                                <FullName>windows-noob</FullName>
                                <Organization>windows-noob</Organization>
                        </UserData>
                        <UseConfigurationSet>true</UseConfigurationSet>
                </component>

once the deployment is complete, you can see your partitions listed in Explorer

[patris1]

Startup Windows SIM and add the Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup component to the Pass 4 Specialize section of the answer file



add a computername and then validate your answer file.

[patris1]

Startup Windows SIM and add the Microsoft-Windows-Setup\UserData\ProductKey to the WindowsPE configuration pass.



Input your key including all the dashs

eg: Y34HR-1GHTU-W15HU-D4MND-L4M3R

set the WillShowUI value to Never



click on Validate to check your answer file

[patris1]

<UseConfigurationSet>true</UseConfigurationSet>



You can install device drivers during Windows Setup by creating an answer file using Windows SIM. In this answer file, you can specify the paths to device drivers on a network share (or a local path) by adding the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE or Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationNonWinPE components and specifying the configuration passes in which you intend to install them. You can install device drivers in the windowsPE, offlineServicing, auditUser or auditSystem configuration passes.

By adding device drivers during the windowsPE or offlineServicing configuration passes, you can add out-of-box device drivers to the Windows image before the computer starts. This method can also be used to add boot-critical device drivers to a Windows image. Digitally signed device drivers can be added to an offline Windows image before Windows Setup or during Windows Setup.

In our example here (local path) we are going to create a folder called drivers, that folder will have subfolders in it with our drivers neatly organised (audio/video/network/etc..) for easy management.

eg:

drivers/audio
drivers/video
drivers/network

and so on

Prepare the Answer file

Startup Windows SIM and in the Windows Image pane, expand components. Select the component called Microsoft-Windows-Setup and add it to Pass 1 WindowsPE if it isn't already added.



Set the UseConfigurationSet value to True using the drop down menu.



Back in the components pane, select the Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE/DriverPaths/PathAndCredentials node and right click, choose add setting to Pass 1 windowsPE.



Set the Key value to 1 and edit the Path value to read as follows:-

%configsetroot%drivers\



Validate your answer file and save it as AutoUnattend.xml.


Prepare the USB Key

Format a USB key and copy the Autounattend.xml file to the root of the key, once done, copy the Drivers folder structure which you prepared earlier to the root of the key



you are now ready to boot the client to test the unattended install.


Below is a sample of the drivers code in AutoUnattend.xml for 64bit Server 2008

<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<UseConfigurationSet>true</UseConfigurationSet>
                </component>
                <component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpCustomizationsWinPE" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
                        <DriverPaths>
                                <PathAndCredentials wcm:action="add" wcm:keyValue="1">
                                        <Path>%configsetroot%drivers\</Path>
                                </PathAndCredentials>
                        </DriverPaths>
                </component>

[patris1]

Start up Windows SIM and in the components section of Windows Image, expand the section called Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin

right-click it and choose Add Setting to Pass 4 Specialize



in the Answer File pane, click on the newly added setting and expand it, select Identification and enter the Domain name in the JoinDomain value.

In addition, if you want to log domain join failures (logs to c:\windows\panther\unattendGC\) then set the DebugJoin option from false to true



f.y.i the error below is from a test deployment and actually happened when the computer failed to join the domain



Quote
Windows Could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file cannot be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for component [Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin].



Browsing the log file mentioned above (setupact.log) showed me this:-

Quote
2008-11-05 15:34:41, Warning [unattendedjoin.exe] Unattended Join: NetJoinDomain attempt failed: 0x52e, will retry in 5 seconds...

repeated many times...

then

Quote
2008-11-05 15:36:19, Error [unattendedjoin.exe] Unattended Join: NetJoinDomain failed error code is [1326]
2008-11-05 15:36:19, Info [unattendedjoin.exe] Debug mode: Breaking to debugger on error: 1326
2008-11-05 15:36:20, FatalError [0x090001] PANTHR Unhandled exception (code 0x80000003: BREAKPOINT) occurred at 0x00000000779E4EA0 in C:\Windows\system32\ntdll.dll (+0000000000044EA0). Minidump attached (25159 bytes).



and the reason why it failed to join the domain ? wrong password specified in the XML file...

click on Credentials under Identification, and enter your domain name/user/password for the account which will join this computer to the domain



validate your answer file by clicking on the Validate icon, check the messages pane to ensure there are no warnings or errors