There are a million different ways to build and deploy an image.
In our environment, we use a thick Windows XP image that is preloaded with a fairly large amount of corporate software such as email, office, standard applications etc.
However, for various reasons, and unlike our new Windows 7 dev image, we don't just push down and apply an already built ghost file or WIM to the machine. We actually run an unattended install of XP and then install all the SOE applications on each machine using DS 6.9 SP4
To help the support teams ensure the image was still building after XP was installed (and to make sure end users didn't start using it), we have a series of automatic admin logins on the machine that display an HTA with progress details about the build. It looks like such:
Ian Atkin thought it may be a good idea to post this up for other people to look at. So here you go! I've attached a sample file to this post. All you need are the two files: DeploymentSolutionBuildSplash.hta and DeploymentSolutionBuildSplash.jpg. You don't even really need the JPG, you could just use HTML to give some colour to the background, or even just leave it white.
The script basically does this:
Launches an HTA that the user can't close (without going to taskmgr and killing mshta.exe)
Displays a warning about the currently building machine
Queries the DS database and shows the following information via HTML:
- Build version (that's a custom thing we do that is detailed in the script)
- Machine name
- Machine IP address
- Machine asset tag
- Machine serial number
- The DS current job (event) that the machine is processing
It's all pretty simple and you shouldn't have any issues reading the attached script and figuring out what is happening.
We have a few reboots in our build after the XP source is installed, so we just increase the AutoLogonCount in the UNATTEND.TXT for the source when a reboot is needed in DS. Then we just make the banner the next job before we do anything else.
The banner sits locally on the machine, too. It's part of the source that is copied down to the machine initially. The DS job that calls the banner is just running a simple VBScript:
'Display Install Banner
'vbscript
Set WS = Createobject ("WScript.Shell")
WS.Run "mshta c:\setup\DeploymentSolutionBuildSplash.hta",0,False
WScript.Quit
There's probably quite a few ways this could be improved/modified, but someone posted a thread asking about something similar, so I wanted to get it up.
Fred is just what I called the image by the way. I've also provided a .PSD file so you can edit the above image.
Let me know if you need any clarification with this.
Have fun!