neptunlabs

Manual Portugues Senao 8310. A few weeks ago, we announced that Windows Thin PC had been released to manufacturing, and today, I am excited to say that Windows Thin PC is now generally available.

So, you finally decided to virtualize your desktops. Plus, you want to reuse your old desktops as Thin clients. You’re not alone.

This kind of thing happens all the time, and there are options for you. My favorite so far is the use of Windows Thin PC.

It connects to your domain, it’s easy to manage and you probably already own the licenses for it if you’re running Microsoft Virtual Desktops. Here’s the Lowdown on Windows Thin PC Thin PC is a dumbed down version of Windows 7 that is very similar to Windows Embedded. You are only allowed to install remote desktop clients, management applications, security applications and media players on it. You can connect it to the domain and push out GPOs. You cannot install any productivity applications like Microsoft Office. It does not have Windows Search, and you cannot install any other Windows Features.

Sounds like everything you need in a Thin client. You cannot buy Windows Thin PC licenses by themselves. To get them, you must purchase Windows 8.1 with Software Assurance or the Windows VDA license. Windows 8.1 with SA licensing has some strange legality issues when it comes to VDI. We tend to go for VDA licensing instead.

Overview of the Method I know what you’re saying, “But Trey, I don’t want to go around and install this on hundreds of computers. I would have to walk around to all of them and run through the install.

Then, I would have to install my antivirus and remote connection software.” Well, I didn’t want to do that either. I found an easier way to deploy it. Here are the detailed steps for you.

My colleague,, wrote a for those of you who would like to deploy via DVD or USB stick. It should be out shortly. Here’s what you will need: • A server with Windows 2012R2 installed on it. This can be virtual. 2008R2 will work too, but 2012R2 has some really good enhancements. Inpa 5.0.2 Ncs Expert. My guide is going to focus on 2012R2. • Windows Active Directory domain.

• A 32 bit computer or server to install the windows AIK kit. I had a LOT of problems trying to create the autounattended.xml files on the 64 bit version. Just to make things easier on yourself, find a 32 bit OS somewhere. A virtual machine with windows 7 32 or Windows Server 2008 should work fine. You can get the AIK here:. It is a really large download.

About 1.7 GB. • A virtual machine to install Thin PC and configure our custom image. You can use a physical computer, but it is going to make your life so much easier if you can virtualize it. That way, you can take a snapshot every time you make a change and revert back if you make a mistake. Chances are, if you are installing VDI, you already have some sort virtualization server and know how to use it.

So, I’m not going to go into a lot of details about this here. • Thin PC license and installation CD. As discussed in the Thin PC low down section, you get these with Windows VDA licenses. • A lot of time to tweak your images and get everything perfect. Let’s Set Things Up 1. Windows Deployment Server Try not to install it on a server with DHCP server installed. It just makes things harder.

Install the Windows Deployment Service and any recommended features. Once that finishes, open up the Windows Deployment Service console. That will bring you to the screen below. Notice that under Servers it has the name of your sever with a yellow exclamation point.

Right-click that and select Configure Server. This will bring up the wizard.

Select Integrated with Active Directory and click Next. On my servers I like to change the remote installation path to a data drive D: RemoteInstall. You are welcome to put this folder in a location of your liking. It will create a shared folder that WDS needs to work properly. Select Respond to all computers known and unknown and click Next. Do not check the box to require administrator approval.

Uncheck Add images to the server now and click Finish. Now you get a page similar to this: Right-click on Boot Images and select Add Boot Image.

You want to browse to your CD location and navigate to the Sources folder. Find Boot.wim and select that. You’re welcome to change the name here, but it’s not necessary. Next through that wizard to finish.

What you just did was pull over the Windows PE image from the Thin PC installation DVD. If you don’t know much about Windows PE search Google to learn some more.

It’s just a really small version of Windows that you can boot into from the CD. It has several cool tools to work on computers. The part we are concerned about here is using it to copy images to a computer. Now that we have the regular boot image, we want to create a boot image specifically for capturing custom images.