Welcome back to IT Free Training Windows 7 free training course. In this video I will
be looking at installing Windows 7 using the network. When you are installing Windows 7
to a hand full of computers you are best off using the DVD. If however if you have a large
number of computers you may want to consider installing from the network.
There are many advantages to using a network based install over the DVD. Firstly it is
easier to customize then a network install. If you want to add a service pack, drivers
or change a setting you can change the media directly. Making changes to the DVD means
burning a new DVD each time a change is made. Networked based installs scale better then
installing from other media types. If you install off a DVD or a USB thumb drive, you
need to take the media to the computer you want to install to. Also if you want to perform
multiple installs you need multiple copies of the DVD or multiple USB flash drives.
In order to perform a network install you can perform one in two ways. The first is
via a network share. To do this, you would boot from a Windows PE boot disk. Windows
PE is a CD based boot disk that replaces the old floppy boot disks. The advantage of this
method is that you can create many windows P E boot disks which will not require updating
too often. If you want to make changes to the install media you simply change the data
on the network share. The advantage of using a network share is
that the only infrastructure that you require is a network share. You can use the network
share method on any computer that you can boot Windows PE off to launch the setup. You
can perform multiple installs at once from the same network share, however you won't
have any multicasting support. Multicasting allows the same packet of data to be sent
on the network to many different computers. If you want to be able to use multicast, you
will need to use a system like windows deployment services otherwise known as WDS. WDS is designed
for networks where you have a lot of computers to perform installs on. Because it is aimed
more at enterprise networks, it requires a more infrastructure then the other install
methods. To use WDS you require a domain controller,
DHCP and DNS. The advantage of WDS is that it supports network booting so you don't require
an optic drive to perform the install. Lastly you need a network card that supports PXE.
PXE allow your computer to boot off the network. PXE has been around for a long time so it
is very likely your network card will support it. On some systems, you may need to enable
network booting in the bios before you can use it.
Now that we understand the two methods that you can use to install Windows 7 over the
network, I will switch to my Windows 7 computer to perform a network install.
First of all I will look at installing windows from a network share. To do this, I first
need a Windows PE disk to boot my computer. To create a new Windows PE disk, I need to
install the Windows automated installation kit. This is available for download from the
Microsoft web site. I have already download the tool kit and burn
it to a DVD. Once I insert the DVD I can run the setup program. The install is quiet a
simple one. Select Windows AIK Setup. Accept the license and the install directory and
the software will be installed. The install takes around 5 to 10 minutes but I have sped
up the process so we don't have to wait. Once installed, I need to run the deployment
tools command prompt from the start menu. The difference between this command prompt
and a regular command prompt is that certain variables are set up so that I don't have
know where the program are located in order to run them.
The first command I need to run is CopyPE. cmd. This will copy the necessary files for
Windows PE to a directory of my choosing. In this case I will a 32 bit version of Windows
PE. There are not too many files to copy so the process does not take too long.
Once complete, if I list the directory you can see that a folder called ISO has been
created. If I change into this directory I can now list all the files that will be on
the Window P E disc. If I want to add additional files it is a simple matter of adding them.
For example, if I wanted to add ImageX which is used to deploy a customized Windows 7 image,
I can copy it to the directory like this. I will cover ImageX later on in the course
so don't worry if you don't understand what it does at this point.
If I now go back a directory I am ready to create my image. If I create a ISO image now
it will not work. There seems to be a bug in the Windows 7 AIK. To get around this,
I need to copy the file winpe.wim to the ISO slash sources directory with the file name
boot dot w i m. Now that this is done, I am ready to create
my image. To do this, I use the command OSCDImg. The command has a number of options. The minus
n option allows long file names. Since we are creating a bootable cd you also need the
minus b option. The minus b option specifics a file containing the boot sector needed by
bootable cd's. Lucky for us Microsoft provides us one.
Once I have put in the correct options, all I need to do is enter in the directory containing
the source files which will be the ISO directory and a target file. Once complete, windows
will start creating an ISO image for you. The process does not take too long to complete.
Once done you are free to use any burning software to write the image to a disk.
Now the ISO has been created, I am going to reboot the computer and boot off a Windows
PE disk that I created earlier. You will notice that the boot process is the same as when
I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 using either the DVD or USB thumb drive.
Once windows PE has booted I will get a useable command prompt. From here I can run the command
net use to map a drive to a file server containing the install media. In this case I simply inserted
the DVD into a server and shared it. However if you wanted to make changes to the media
it is a simply matter to copy the contents of the DVD to a directory on your server and
share the directory. Now the drive has been mapped I can run the
setup program. The setup will run exactly the same way as if I had install it from the
DVD. I won't bother going through the setup process as it is essentially the same as the
video I did previously. What I will do however, is reboot the computer and demonstrate installing
Windows 7 using windows deployment services. On this network I have a WDS server set up.
To access WDS, I will switch to my Windows 7 computer and start it up. On this particular
computer I have the option to press F12 to boot from the network. On your computer the
key may be different. If you computer has an integrated network card, you may need to
enable network booting inside the bios. You will see the computer gets and IP address
from the network. It will then prompt you to press F12. Pressing F 12 will cause the
computer to download Windows PE from the network. The following screens look the same as the
other setup methods because whether using the DVD, USB Thumb drive, network or WDS,
windows PE is still loaded to run the setup. Once loaded, the setup menus look a little
different but are essentially the same. Once I have chosen the language I want to use and
then chosen the country and keyboard, I will then be prompted for a user account with access
to the domain. This is ensures the person performing the install has permission.
On the next screen you can choose which operating system you want to install. I have already
added windows server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 to WDS. This is one of biggest advantages
of WDS is that you can use it to deploy more than one operating system. Once I select the
operating system I will be taken to the familiar disk management screen of the setup. Once
I select a drive windows will start installing. So far I have covered how to perform a clean
install of Windows 7 and how to upgrade to Windows 7. However in some cases you not need
to install a new copy of Windows 7. For example if you purchase a new laptop. This brings
us to the topic of our next video, migrating to Windows 7.