If you downloaded the latest versions of the BDD 2007, then you don’t need this update rollup. If you’re working with an older version, it is recommended that you install it. I counted about 30 bug fixes.

I must admit that I only played a little with the BDD 2007, but my first impression is quite positive. What I like is that all the necessary tools can be downloaded and installed right from the GUI. So it is unlike as with Forefront Client Security, where you have to go hunting first for all the required programs.

Note that you can use BDD 2007 not only for Vista, but also for Windows XP. If you want to get an idea first of how this tool is used, you can check out an article of the Lazy Admin, explaining how you can create a Windows XP image with BDD 2007. It seems he is not as lazy as he thinks since he made many screenshots.

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Who ever published this, obviously didn’t catch that Longhorn has been christened Windows Server 2008 some time ago. But he or she must have better information regarding Service Pack 1 for Vista. The last thing I heard about Vista SP1 is that it might come out together with Windows Server 2008. But is there really a Beta 3 of Vista SP1, too? And if so, why isn’t it publicly available like the one for WS2k8?

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According to the publishing date it has been available since Feb. 13^th, but Nick MacKechnie, a Microsoft employee, claimed in his blog that they just published it today. Someone linked to the German version of the WAIK in a commentary here which, according to the publishing date, was already released in November 2006.

Anyway, I installed it today. It is working now without any tricks. Note that you have to install MSXML 6.0, first. If you run STARTCD.exe from the WAIK DVD, you’ll get a menu which links to the MSXML setup.

By the way, if you want to try WAIK under VMware Workstation, you can just mount the img file, you downloaded. You only have to select “All Files” for files type when you browse for the image file in the Virtual Machine settings, then just mount it like an ISO image.

• Tweets: VMM 2008 price and release date – WAIK update – SaaS without browser – Hyper-V snapshots – VMware ESXi embedded (1)
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• Poll results: When will your organization deploy Vista? (0)
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If you try to install the WAIK from the DVD, you’ll get an error message requesting for the WAIK installation CD. At first, I thought that it might have been my fault because I couldn’t believe that Microsoft would offer a 990 MB download with such an obvious bug.

But some commentators on my blog post confirmed it and one even found a solution to the problem. Thanks for that! If you copy the DVD to the hard disk and start the MSI there, the installation will run through without problems.

Now, I really wonder, how something like this can happen. Doesn’t Microsoft test their software before releasing it to the public? Of course, software can always contain bugs. But, in this case, you can’t even install the software. This can only mean that nobody tested it before they released the WAIK to the Web. It seems to me that Microsoft staff is still working under very high time pressure. I am sure, the WAIK’s release is far behind the schedule. This is probably also true for a couple of other tools related to Vista deployment (SMS 2003 SP3, KMS, VAMT, etc.).

Another thing, I find remarkable, is the fact that Microsoft removed the WAIK download without any note. If you access the WAIK download URL now you only get this:

The download you requested is unavailable. If you continue to see this message when trying to access this download, go to the “Search for a Download” area on the Download Center home page.

Doesn’t anyone have time anymore to write a message that would explain the situation? Or is it just too embarrassing?

This incident is a further hint to better wait with the Vista roll out as long as you can. At the moment, you can’t rely on Vista and its related products. People working under time pressure make mistakes.

• Tweets: VMM 2008 price and release date – WAIK update – SaaS without browser – Hyper-V snapshots – VMware ESXi embedded (1)
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Sometime ago, I mentioned BDD 2007. I wrote that it included these tools, but this was not correct. The beta of BDD 2007 contained WAIK, but it is now available as a separate download. The DVD image has 992 MB and it took me almost an hour to download it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to install the WAIK.

I was able to burn the DVD and also to start the WAIK setup. At the middle of the installation procedure, I got this message: “Please insert the disk: Windows Automated Installation Kit CD“. However, the DVD was still in the drive, of course. I tried to install it on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista. I downloaded the file again, mounted it in a VM running XP and Vista under VMware Workstation. I got the same error message.

The documentation of the WAIK is available separately. So maybe you have a look at it first before downloading this huge image. I will report about it here as soon as I get the WAIK running. If you had more success in installing it, please let me know. Somehow I think it is bug or maybe I am just missing something here.

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Most interesting for me in BDD 2007 Beta 2 is Zero Touch Installation (ZTI). As far as I can understand Microsoft’s announcement, it is an add-on for Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003. “Zero Touch” sounds promising, although I somehow doubt that this naming is justified. We use SMS 2003 for deploying Windows XP and are quite satisfied with it, though. I’ll probably test ZTI soon and report about it here.

To download BDD 2007 Beta 2 you have to get an account at Microsoft Connect first.

This is the list of changes in the announcement for BDD 2007:

• Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) using SMS 2003 (requires OSD Update build 3726) in addition to Lite Touch Installation (LTI) when SMS 2003 is not in place.
• Windows XP desktop image creation.
• x64 hardware (running Windows XP or Windows Vista).
• BDD Workbench installation of the Windows AIK during first use.
• Windows Deployment Services images for Refresh, Replace, New, and Upgrade scenarios.
• BDD Workbench now builds the set of files needed for SMS 2003 OS Deployment Feature Pack package creation.
• Office 2007 deployment is integrated into the BDD Workbench to build the source share, create, and populate the application selection screens.
• New OS source move feature-faster than copy when adding a new OS to Workbench and the source is the same drive-primarily added to enhance demos and training.
• Application grouping with dependency checking.
• Product ID key handling for Windows XP and Windows Vista deployment scenarios.
• Removable media deploy points and better filtering to reduce media size.
• Fewer restrictions on version mixing of newer WAIK and Vista releases.
• Version checks now performed and detected issues are displayed.
• User State Migration Tool (USMT) update for Windows Vista RC1.

Via Management Solution and Arlindo Alves

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ImageX is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) , which is a part of Business Desktop Deployment (BDD 2007). You can download it at Microsoft Connect . After installing BDD 2007, you have to install WAIK. You find the WAIK installation folder in the BDD Vista folder. There is the WAIK setup file for every CPU type. For a 32-bit Intel CPU you can start waikx86.msi, for example.

To be able to mount an image, you have to install the WIM filter first. Start the Windows Explorer with Administrator rights. To do so, you have to right click on its icon. Then, go to C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\tools. There, you can choose the correct folder for your CPU type. To install the WIM filter, right click on wimfltr.inf and then click on “install”. Now, you have to reboot.

You will find the ImageX tool in the same folder as wimfltr.inf. As it is command line tool, you have to open this folder on the Command Prompt. Don’t forget to start the Command Prompt with Administrator rights.

Before you can mount an image, you have to find out the image number within the WIM file since it can contain more than one image. The WIM file of my Windows Vista Beta 2 DVD contains seven images; for every Windows edition, one image. Enter “imagex /info img_file“, where “img_file” represents the location of the WIM file. You should see now the description of the WIM file as an XML file. The name of the tag for the image number is IMAGE INDEX.

One last step is necessary before we can finally mount the image. Create a new folder where the image shall be mounted. This is the image path. Now, you can mount the image:

imagex /mount img_file img_number img_path

With this command, you only have read access to the image. If you want to inject a device driver or a file, you also need write access. The command for this looks like this:

imagex /mountrw img_file img_number img_path

Once you’ve modified the image you can unmount it with this command:

imagex /unmount /commit img_path

Update: Please, also check out my article about GImageX, a GUI tool for mounting WIM files and DISM another tool that can be used to mount WIM images.

• FREE: GDism ELDI – A GUI for managing WIM images (5)
• FREE: imagepatcher – Update WIM images (0)
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• FREE: VMware DiskMount GUI – Mount VMDK files (4)

User State Migration Tool – USMT 3.0: USMT is a set of tools and configuration files which enables you to migrate user accounts during large deployments of Windows. We have never used USMT 2.6 for Windows XP since we work with server based profiles. We have all the user settings and data in the user profiles. So, when we switch to a new Windows version all settings are copied automatically. USMT 3.0 has some new features but nothing really revolutionary. The configuration files use XML now. I guess, nobody will miss the old .inf files. Microsoft has a complete list of the new features of USMT 3.0.

ImageX: You’ve probably heard it; installing and deploying Windows Vista basically means imaging. So the running debate between imaging advocates and supporters of unattended installations is, hopefully, over now. This is good news for me. I always was a big fan of OS cloning. ImageX (formerly XImage) is part of the free Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). There was a download page for WAIK, but it seems that Microsoft removed it. It is now part of BDD 2007 (see below). You use this command line tool to create and apply images in the WIM format. The best feature of this utility is that it is HAL-independent. This reduces the number of images you have to manage since the same image can be used for different kinds of hardware. ImageX is also used for offline image editing.

Windows System Image Manager (WSIM): Basically the WSIM is the Vista version of Windows XP‘s setup manager. You can use WSIM to create and edit the XML-based unattended-configuration files, and to add, modify, or delete optional components such as languages, service packs, updates, and device drivers within an existing Vista image. It is possible to script WSIM from the command line.

Windows Deployment Services (WDS): WDS is also a part of the WAIK. It is the replacement for Microsoft’s Remote Installation Services (RIS). WDS is used for network-based deployments of Windows Vista. It is has to be installed on Windows Server 2003. The clients boot-up using PXE (Pre-boot Execution Environment) and load Windows PE from the server to start the imaging process. Thanks to PXE, you can use it for bare-metal installations. I played a little with RIS when it came out, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t try WDS yet, but now I am curious to see if it has become a better tool. The main new features of WDS certainly are the support of WIM images and Windows PE 2.0.

Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 (ACT): You might have worked with ACT 4.0. or 4.1 after Windows XP SP2 came out. Many applications encountered problems after the installation of SP2. The new Windows Firewall was especially a big problem. ACT helps to identify these compatibility issues. ACT 5.0 is also for Windows XP SP2, but its main target is Windows Vista. The changes in Vista are certainly bigger than in XP/SP2. So you should expect more compatibility problems. User Account Control and Internet Explorer 7 will probably cause many troubles. ACT 5.0 helps you to analyse problematic applications.

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor: I tried the beta of the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor a while ago. At the moment I can’t recommend using this tool. It produces more or less useless output. The idea is that you get information if a Windows XP-based PC can run Windows Vista. Since many hardware vendors don’t have drivers yet for Vista, Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor has many complaints on most computers. So don’t be shocked when you try it; if your PC has enough memory and CPU power, Vista will most probably run on it.

Windows PE 2.0: Windows PE plays an essential role in deploying Windows Vista, especially for remote bare-metal installations. Windows PE 2.0 is a subset of Windows Vista. It can be loaded across the network to start the imaging process of the Vista installation. Last week, I posted an article about the new features Windows PE 2.0.

Standard User Analyzer: The fact that many users work with administrator rights under Windows is one of the major complaints of security experts. In Windows Vista, Microsoft finally tried to address this issue. Most prominent is the User Account Control (UAC) feature. The biggest problem of UAC are these annoying pop-ups, informing you that you don’t have enough rights to perform a certain task. Microsoft Standard User Analyzer shall help developers and administrators to identify the rights an application needs. So if you are a careful administrator, you should check all your applications with this tool to prevent these ugly UAC messages from popping up. The only problem of this utility is that system administrators will have a difficulty using it. Please, check out my review of the Standard User Analyzer.

Business Desktop Deployment for Windows Vista: BDD 2007: BDD 2007 (sometimes you will also find BDD 3.0) is not a tool, but a guide and a collections of deployment tools for Windows Vista. Some of the tools mentioned above are included in in BDD 2007. At the moment, there is only the beta version and you have to apply first at Microsoft Connect to be able to download it. Microsoft offers something similar for Windows XP, the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment or BDD 2.7. Of course BDD 3.0 and BDD 2.7 discuss other tools since the deployment of Windows XP is quite different to that of Windows Vista.

Did I forget any free Microsoft deployment tool? Please, let me know!

• FREE: GDism ELDI – A GUI for managing WIM images (5)
• FREE: imagepatcher – Update WIM images (0)
• Macrium Reflect – another “free” system backup tool (4)
• DriveImage XML – a free imaging tool for personal use (11)
• FREE: VMware DiskMount GUI – Mount VMDK files (4)