Deploy to a Device (Industry 8)

Article
04/29/2016

7/8/2014

Learn how to deploy a Windows Embedded 8 Industry (Industry 8) image to your device.

The Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK) is designed to help deploy the Windows 8 operating system. This same toolkit is used to deploy Windows Embedded 8 Industry (Industry 8). Industry 8 can be installed in many ways but we recommend that you deploy Industry 8 by using the Windows ADK.

Overview

See Basic Windows Deployment Step-by-Step Guide in the Windows ADK for more information on deployment with the Windows ADK.

Glossary

The following terms are used in this document:

configuration file
An XML-based file that contains definitions and values to be used by Image Builder to build your OS. The term configuration file in Industry 8 is synonymous with the term answer file in the Windows ADK documentation and are used interchangeably in this guide.

destination device
The device to which you are going to deploy an Industry 8 image. When testing, this may be the same as your reference device.

reference device
The device on which you build a reference image. It should have the same or similar hardware as your eventual destination device.

reference image
The image you create that has all the software and drivers you will eventually be deploying which is thengeneralized for deployment.

technician computer
The computer on which you install the Windows ADK.

Deployment Process

The basic process of deploying Industry 8 from an image contains the following steps:

Create a reference image using Industry 8 Setup
Customize your reference image in audit mode (optional)
Start and test your reference image
Generalize your reference image
Capture your reference image
Deploy your image

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for creating and deploying an Industry 8 image are:

A technician computer, which has the following:
- The Windows ADK installed. See Windows Deployment with the Windows ADK for more information on where to obtain the Windows ADK and how to install it.
- A network connection.
A reference device, which has the following:
- A DVD-ROM drive to run Industry 8 Setup on the device.
- A network connection.
- At least one USB port.
A destination device with the same requirements as the reference device. You may also reuse the reference device.
The Industry 8 media disk appropriate to your device architecture.
A bootable USB flash drive that has is_winpe4 installed on it. This is used to start Windows PE 4.0 on your device so you can capture and deploy images and run scripts. See Walkthrough: Install Windows PE to CD, USB Flash Drive, or USB Hard Drive for instructions on creating a bootable Windows PE 4.0 USB flash drive.
An external storage device that has at least 8 GB of free space and is formatted as NTFS. This can be a second USB flash drive, an external USB hard disk drive or a network location. This will be used to store your Industry 8 image file and any scripts. This guide assumes this external storage is a USB hard drive.

Instructions

Create a Reference Image by Using Industry 8 Setup

The simplest way to begin creating a reference image is to use Industry 8 Setup on your reference device. See Build an Industry Device with Industry Setup for instructions on running Industry 8 Setup.

If you want, you can also create a configuration file from scratch using Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM). See Windows SIM How-to Topics for more information on how to create a configuration file.

(Optional) Customize Your Reference Image in Audit Mode

Audit mode can be used to customize your reference image after initial setup and before some Industry 8 lockdown features are applied. You can sign in to Industry 8 in audit mode using the built-in administrator account and manually perform tests and tasks that can be difficult or impossible during installation. You can also customize the default user profile in audit mode.

When in audit mode, you can access the configuration file (Unattend.xml) file, enabling it to be copied or changes to be made to it before starting Industry 8 too.

Start and Test Your Reference Image

Once you have completed your image customizations, restart your reference device to complete setup and start Industry 8. Thoroughly test your reference image to make sure it is working as expected.

Generalize Your Reference Image

To prepare your image for capture by cleaning up various user-specific and device-specific settings, in addition to log files, you need to run Sysprep.exe and generalize the image.

To generalize your image, open a command prompt with administrator user rights and type the following:

                                <systemdrive>:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown

Warning

When you run the sysprep/generalize command, out-of-box device drivers are removed from the Industry 8 image. If you add out-of-box device drivers during installation and you intend to capture the Industry 8 image, set the PersistAllDeviceInstalls setting of the Microsoft-Windows-PnpSysprep component to True in your configuration file. This prevents Sysprep from removing the detected device drivers.

Capture Your Reference Image

Plug your USB flash drive with Windows PE 4.0 on it to the reference device and start Windows PE 4.0. You may have to modify your device’s startup order for this.
At the Windows PE 4.0 command prompt, type the following:
```
diskpart
```
Write down the drive letters and names. For example:
- C = System
- D = Windows
- E = External USB hard disk
- F = USB flash drive
To leave Diskpart, type exit.

To capture the image of the Windows partition on your reference device, type the following:

dism /Capture-Image /CaptureDir: <windowspartition>:\ /ImageFile: <externaldriveletter>:\ <wimname>.wim /Name:” <image name>”

This process can take several minutes.

Tip

If you have sufficient space on your reference device’s internal hard drive, you can also capture the .wim file onto it, then copy it to the external hard drive. This is generally faster than capturing the .wim file directly to a USB hard drive.

Deploy Your Image

On your destination device, insert your Windows PE 4.0 media and restart the device.

Note

If your hard drive contains an active partition, you may have to override the startup order to start from your media. If your device contains an unformatted hard disk, you may be able to skip this step.
At the Windows PE 4.0 command prompt and format the destination device’s hard drive to match the disk configuration of your reference device using DiskPart. For example, type the following:
```
diskpart
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary size=400
select partition 1
format quick fs=ntfs
assign letter="S"
active
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs
assign letter="C"
exit
```
You can create a script with this information by saving it to a text file and storing it in the same location as your image. To run the script from a Windows PE 4.0 command prompt window, type the following:
```
diskpart /s <scriptname>.txt
```

To apply the image to the hard disk, type the following:

Dism /apply-image /imagefile: <externaldriveletter>:\ <wimname>.wim /index:1 /ApplyDir:c:\

To set up a basic system partition, you can use the BCDBoot tool to copy a simple set of system files to a system partition. These files include boot configuration data (BCD) information that is used to start Windows.
To use the BCDboot tool to copy common system partition files and to initialize boot configuration data, type the following:
```
C:\Windows\System32\bcdboot C:\Windows /l en-US
```
Important

If you have implemented features that modify the image’s BCD settings (such as UWF), you will need to either capture and deploy both the Windows and system partitions or you will need to apply the BCD settings after deployment to each device, either manually or with a script.

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