The Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 has been released head over here to get it.

Head on over to Richard Smith's blog to get GImageX. GImageX is a GUI for imageX. The original verison was written in AutoIT but this version has been completely rewritten in C++. The new version v2.0.1 BETA feature list on Richard's site:

• Native x86 and x64 versions entirely written in C++.  Tiny ~100KB executable.
• Doesn’t use the imagex.exe utility at all – instead it uses the WIMGAPI interface (the wimgapi.dll file from the imagex directory)
• Progress bars, time elapsed, time remaining, file counts have been added
• Clean “abort” option
• Ability to mount, change and get info on WIM images

So what are you waiting for, click here to get it.

Microsoft Deployment is the next version of BDD and the final version can be download here.

The brief from MS Dowloads:
Microsoft Deployment is the next version of Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007. It is the recommended process and toolset to automate desktop and server deployment. Microsoft Deployment provides detailed guidance and job aids for every organizational role involved with large-scale deployment projects.

You may have read an article by Ben Hunter on sorting the applications in BDD so they are easier to find when adding them to the Task Sequencer of Database Role. The article can be found here.

An issue arose the other day that necessitated the re-ordering of application in BDD. The current build process that I am working on uses Windows Powershell to do a lot of post build customizations. In testing we found that Powershell was being installed before the .Net Framework. This seemed odd to me as we are using a role to installed our Tier 1 application.

After looking into the issue a bit more it seems that BDD does not honour the order of application defined in the role but installs them in the order they are listed in Applications.xml. This was a problem for us so I set about extending the bddsort application so I could specify any order I wanted. Hence BDD Application Sorter was born.

The program is simple to use, all you need to do is open the Applications.xml file, re-order the application and save the file again. I make a back of Applications.xml just in case but I have never had an issue with the program to date.

Anyway, BDD Application Sorter is attached below. Enjoy!

BBDAppsSort.zip (13.74 KB)

Update: New Version to support Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

The version below will work for the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
MDTAppSort.zip (23.44 KB)

I've been using BDD 2007 a lot lately and I thought it would be nice to get live logging details from BDD rather than using the many .log files that are created. After searching around for possible solution I settled on using a combination of a C# application using HttpListener and a vbscript using MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP. The logging application is shown below.

To setup the remote logger is fairly simple and the files needed are included below. To use the remote logger do the following:

1. Download BDD Remote Logger.zip
2. Copy ZTIGather.xml and ZTIUtility.vbs into your Distribution$\Scripts directory. Do a file compare if you are interested in the changes. There is an addition properity added to ZTIGather.xml called RemoteLogURL and a few lines added to the Logging Class in ZTIUtility.vbs.
3. Add RemoteLogURL=http://yourmachine:8081/
4. Start BDDRemoteLogger.exe and ensure that the url prefix is the name of your machine. The URL Prefix in BDDRemoteLogger must match what you have in your RemoteLogURL value.
5. Click start on BDDRemoteLogger and Run BDD as normal.

If you run BDD with RemoteLogURL present and you BDDRemoteLogger is not listening for requests then it will considerably slow down the BDD logging (approximately 1sec per entry). So if RemoteLogURL is present in Bootstrap.ini then make sure you have the logger running. If RemoteLogURL is not present BDD will run as norma.

If you've got any questions or comments please comment to this post.

Last week I needed to add a large number of hotfixes to the Task Sequencer for an XP BDD 2007 build. After adding the first few by hand I quickly sought after an easier method. As I result I came up with the code below. Althougth it may not be that useful to anyone else I thought I'd post it anyway so people can start to see what is possible using Powershell with BDD.

To use this function as is you need to have a Security Updates group in the task sequencer already. Then create a directory called Hotfixes under Applications in your Distribution point. Download the hotfix into the hotfixes directory and then run Add-Hotfix "hotfixname" "Path to TS.xml". So for a hotfix called WindowsXP-KB923191-x86-ENU.exe you would type something like: Add-Hotfix "WindowsXP-KB923191-x86-ENU" "C:\Data\TS.xml"

function Add-Hotfix ([string] $hotfix, [string]$TSFile) {
   $ts = [xml](Get-Content -read -1 $TSFile)
   $updates = $ts.psbase.SelectSingleNode("//group[@name='Security Updates']")

   $step = $ts.CreateElement("step")

   $name = $ts.CreateAttribute("name")
   $name.psbase.Value = "Microsoft Update - " + $hotfix
   $step.SetAttributeNode($name)

   $disable = $ts.CreateAttribute("disable")
   $disable.psbase.Value = "false"
   $step.SetAttributeNode($disable)

   $continueOnError = $ts.CreateAttribute("continueOnError")
   $continueOnError.psbase.Value = "false"
   $step.SetAttributeNode($continueOnError)

   $successCodeList = $ts.CreateAttribute("successCodeList")
   $successCodeList.psbase.Value = "0 3010"
   $step.SetAttributeNode($successCodeList)

   $description = $ts.CreateAttribute("description")
   $description.psbase.Value = ""
   $step.SetAttributeNode($description)
   
   $startIn = $ts.CreateAttribute("startIn")
   $startIn.psbase.Value = "%DEPLOYROOT%\Applications\Hotfixes"$step.SetAttributeNode($startIn)

   $action = $ts.CreateElement("action")
   $action.psbase.InnerText = $hotfix + ".exe /quiet /passive /norestart"
   $step.AppendChild($action)

   $updates.AppendChild($step)
   
   $ts.Save($TSFile)
}

The virtual machine that I have been using to do some Desktop Deployment work ran out of space today. I notice the directories taking up all the space where the RemoteInstall and Distribution directories that belong to BDD and WDS. So I decided to add another virtual disk and move those two directories.

WDS
Moving WDS was easy, stop the WDS service then do the following:

1. Cut and Past the RemoteInstall Directory to where you'd like it.
2. Reshare the RemoteInstall directory as REMINST
3. Open regedit and change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\TFTPD\Parameters\Directory to the new location of RemoteInstall.
4. Start WDS and you're away.

BDD 2007
BDD 2007 was fairly striaght forward was well. Make sure you've closed the workbench and do the following:

1. Move the Distribution directory to where you'd like it.
2. Open regedit and change HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BDD 2007\Distribution_Dir to the new location of the Distrubution directory.

You can also rename these directories as well.

There, that was fairly painless.

I've been working with Windows System Image Manager today and found myself searching around for the right input locale to use for Australia.

Microsoft have a list of the right locales to use at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms776260.aspx

For us aussies,
Locale identifier:0x0c09
Locale: English (Australia)
Locale name: en-AU
Script tag: Latn
ANSI code page: 1252

So you may have noticed a few asthetic changes to my blog but as well as this I've upgraded it to dasBlog 2.0. I must say the upgrade was fairly painless.

I've been making small but noticable changes to the layout of the site. This will continue until I'm happy with what will be come a new theme I'll send it to be included with dasBlog.

I've recently installed Exchange 2007 and have been trying to get ActiveSyn up and running to sync with my Palm Treo 750. I knew that Exchange 2007 comes with a self-signed cert but didn't know how to get at it or import it into Windows Mobile. Fortunatley the proceedure is very simple and is detailed here.

In case you are wondering the brief steps are as follows:

1. Open IIS and go to the Directory Security Tab of the Default Website.
2. View the Certificate and Click the "Export to File" button.
3. Accept the default options and save the cerificate somewhere you can remember.

To import into Windows Mobile:

1. Copy the .cer file to your Windows Mobile device.
2. Using the File Explorer on the device locate and open the .cer file.
3. Select yes.

Enjoy!