Installing software after .wim image

Question

I have been looking all day into how to install software to a .wim image. I have a .wim image of a laptop that will be deplyed to 20 more. The image is pretty much good to go except I need to add a couple more drivers and a couple more applications.

Is there a way to do this in the answer file? Do I have to deploy the image, install the drivers/application, sysprep, and recapture the image?

Any information relating to this will be greatly appreciated.

Leon

ps I have only been using answer files and imagex. Would like to stick with this for the time being. I plan on using WDT and WDS when I have some time to learn about it.

Answer 1

For drivers :

microsoft offers DISM command line utilty for deploing windows 7

• mount the wim file using Imagex or gimagex or DISM : say to c:\mnt
• Move all your driver packages to one folder called "c:\drv"

• now use this command :

  Dism /image:c:\mnt\ /Add-Driver /driver:c:\drv\ /ForceUnsigned /Recurse

  /ForceUnsigned option for installing unsigned drivers
  /Recurse option : to specify drivers folder and dism will search for any driver package in that folder and auto-install it (if the driver is a package Dism will search for INF file which is the real driver-setup file and add it)

Answer 2

Add Device Drivers to an Offline Windows Image

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766141%28WS.10%29.aspx

If the applications are those that need to be installed in the typical sense, that is they make registry entries and what-not, then you probably need MDT. The applications need a registry to write to, and the only one available is the one on your PC. The registry from the WIM is not mounted. I can't think of how you would accomodate that.

If the applications can just be copied to a PC and run, then you can just copy them into the WIM contents while you have it mounted for the driver addition.

Answer 3

Is there a way to do this in the answer file? Do I have to deploy the image, install the drivers/application, sysprep, and recapture the image?

I don't believe this can be done in the answer file unless you want to try using syncronous or asyncronous commands in the answer file's specialize pahse, which I wouldn't recomend. If you're really adamant about using just imagex, you'd have to sysprep and capture a "thick image" with imagex like you would with ghost.

Building a quick and dirty deployment share in MDT is pretty easy if it's just one make and model and the applications are straight forward. Cool thing about MDT is that it can name them, and join them to the domain automatically if you want. If you ever need to update applications, you won't need to recapture an image, just update the installer msi or exe files in the workbench and you're golden.