My Name is Mitch, and I Pooched My Windows Vista
For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.
There are two truisms that come to mind this morning:
- A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; and
- The more you know the more damage you can do.
Let's start by clarifying that I am not your average computer user. My credentials are irrelevant to that statement, but the truth is I am really a Windows power user. At any given time my primary laptop will have two or three bootable partitions running different operating systems, and when I reconfigure those and often blow partitions away and resize them I thank whoever decided to finally allow Windows to resize partitions on the system drive. (There is still a need for third party utilities for advanced functionality, but for the most part the native tools meet my needs).
Granted there are a fair number of warning messages that I encounter in the course of my work that the average user is less likely to see. One such message reads something like 'Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue?' yesterday in order to make my life easier (do you see where this is going?) I blew past this message without giving it a whole lot of thought. By the time I was done, I had a whole lot of programs - including a number of components of the operating system - that true to its word no longer ran correctly.
I am certainly not the only person with issues like these. Developers and testers will fry and redeploy their systems with boring regularity. With previous versions of Windows there were deployment options, but they were not entirely friendly. The best way to do it for an individual computer was using a product like Symantec Ghost and just re-image the hard drive.
in the mid-1990s Microsoft developed an installation method for Windows that lasted for several versions. You must know it, even if you haven't given it much thought. Text Mode with the blue background, followed by the GUI Mode setup once the necessary files had been copied onto the hard disk. A couple of times during the two processes you would be prompted for information - Product Key, network information, and so on. It worked... even if it was not pretty.
The installation process for Windows Vista has been completely rewritten, with the help of the Deployment team. Rather than an installation, it is a self-contained deployment solution out of the box. The WIM (Windows Imaging file format) that comes on the original DVD can be customized, or you can build and package your own using the free tools available at www.microsoft.com/desktopdeployment.
Creating your own WIM file can be interesting... You can create what is called a Thick Image, where you install all of your applications and then package the WIM file. This means that when you redeploy it will be ready to go with all of your applications... in my case this would include Microsoft Office, Microsoft Expressions, Adobe Creative Suites, Magic ISO, DivX Player, and a dozen other applications. Once you have installed everything the way you want you then boot into Windows PE (you are licensed to build your own Windows PE disk using the free tools) and prepare and then package your operating system. You will have your very own custom WIM file that you can import into an deployment point (deployment server, DVD, USB Key...) and then any time you need to redeploy your system you can do it within a few minutes, with no effort at all.
Because I have the infrastructure in place at home I prefer to deploy a Thin Image, which is essentially a bare bones deployment of Vista. Using my Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) I have set up a deployment. I create Application Packages for all of my applications, Update Packages for any service packs or updates, and Driver Packages for the drivers for my hardware - and any hardware I might have in my organization. Using the Task Sequencer (a component of System Center that is included with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit) the deployment server installs Windows onto my PC, then boots into it and installs the applications I have set up, all with little (or depending on the environment NO) user interaction.
Because the WIM file is hardware agnostic it becomes a snap to change hardware - so when I changed laptops in January from the Acer to the Dell I did not have to rebuild my WIM image, I was able to just redeploy it to my new laptop, and because I had created Driver Packages for all of my laptop's drivers the process was completely seamless... on Thursday I was using my old laptop and on Friday I was using my new one... and nothing else had changed.**
These improvements to deployment extend far beyond the single system organization; the benefits grow exponentially with the number of systems in your organization. With Windows Vista and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit it is simple for even the simplest of IT departments in the smallest organization to set up a deployment server and deploy new systems (or redeploy existing ones, should they be pooched or infected). Imagine purchasing ten new systems and having them deployed within your organization with all company customizations, patches, applications, and such in less than an hour, rather than spending an hour on each one. Imagine the equivalent time savings on a hundred machines!
These improvements are a lot less exciting to the average end user than Aero Glass, 3D-Flip, and file indexing. However many of us who remember sitting in labs 'ghosting' hard drives all week-end should see this as one of the major feature improvements over previous Windows operating systems. Also those who have experience with BDD 2.5 will see immediate improvements in BDD 2007 and MDT which are all directly related to this change in the client operating system.
So it is true, this week I managed to completely pooch my Windows Vista... but it was okay, because since they have made all of these improvements, I was up and running again in no time flat. Yet another great new feature of Windows Vista!
** It is important to be aware of the End User License Agreement for both your operating system and any applications in your organization. Although my laptop did come with an OEM license for Windows Vista I am not using that license, and instead opted to use a Full Package Product (FPP) license of both Windows and Microsoft Office. Because of that I was within my rights to transfer that operating system from my old system to my new one, and reinstall the original OEM license of Windows XP on the old laptop before selling it on eBay. With regard to Microsoft operating systems OEM licenses are 'married' to the hardware with which it is purchased and cannot under any circumstances be transferred from one computer to another; nor can OEM images be customized in any way. They can however be imported into deployment points and distributed AS IS.
For more information about the Windows Springboard Series visit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8418918.