BDD 2007 is an essential tool and documentation set for deploying Windows Vista. Almost two months after the release of the business edition of Vista, its final version is finally ready for download. BDD 2007 contains important tools like ImageX and Windows System Image Manager (WSIM). I’ve been writing about some of the tools before. Please check out the Related section below.

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There are two versions of XXClone, a free one and a pro edition. The pro edition has some additional features which are useful if you want to be able to schedule the creation of images.

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Windows Connected has six useful tips for admins dealing with Vista’s new imaging technology: Script Everything, Automate Your Installs, Virtual Machines make it easy, Minimize Drivers in your reference Image, Keep a build document, Hardware.

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David D’Souza, the Director of Development in the Windows Core OS Division, wrote an article about the reasons why Microsoft used imaging technology for the setup process of Windows Vista. It is interesting to note that installation speed seems to be the main advantage in his view. We use imaging technology since we deploy Windows NT, and performance was never the reason why we preferred it over unattended installations.

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The Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007 includes many important tools for Windows Vista deployment. Most important is the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) which contains ImageX, Microsoft’s new imaging tool, and Windows Deployment Services (WDS), the successor of Remote Installation Services (RIS). Please check out my summary about Windows Vista’s deployment tools for more information. BDD 2007 Beta 2 extends Beta 1 with a couple of new features.

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According to Microsoft, you can apply a Windows Vista image to PCs with different Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). You only need different images for computers with 32 bit and 64 bit CPUs. This sounds like a revolution for Windows imaging and deployment. So I was quite curious to try this killer feature of Windows Vista.

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Windows Deployment Services (WDS) is the successor of Remote Installation Services (RIS), and can be used to deploy Windows Vista and older Windows versions. In this review I’ll be discussing the experiences I had with WDS.

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For every installation of Windows Vista, you need an image in the WIM format. One great feature of WIM images is that you can mount and inject them with device drivers or other files. In this post, I will be explaining how to mount an image in a WIM file with ImageX. ImageX is the tool for capturing and applying images. But it can also be used to modify an image. This article is based on Windows Vista Beta 2.

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In this post, I am going to introduce some important concepts of Windows Vista’s imaging technology. Every Windows system administrator has to learn about this sooner or later since imaging is the only way to install Windows Vista.

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I am preparing an article for a German magazine about Windows Vista’s new features from a system administrator’s point of view. I would like to share some of the results of my research here. In this post, you will find a list of Microsoft’s free deployment tools for Windows Vista with short descriptions.

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