be looking at installing Windows 7 using the network. When you are installing Windows 7

to a hand full of computers you are best off using the DVD. If however if you have a large

number of computers you may want to consider installing from the network.

There are many advantages to using a network based install over the DVD. Firstly it is

easier to customize then a network install. If you want to add a service pack, drivers

or change a setting you can change the media directly. Making changes to the DVD means

burning a new DVD each time a change is made. Networked based installs scale better then

installing from other media types. If you install off a DVD or a USB thumb drive, you

need to take the media to the computer you want to install to. Also if you want to perform

multiple installs you need multiple copies of the DVD or multiple USB flash drives.

In order to perform a network install you can perform one in two ways. The first is

via a network share. To do this, you would boot from a Windows PE boot disk. Windows

PE is a CD based boot disk that replaces the old floppy boot disks. The advantage of this

method is that you can create many windows P E boot disks which will not require updating

too often. If you want to make changes to the install media you simply change the data

on the network share. The advantage of using a network share is

that the only infrastructure that you require is a network share. You can use the network

share method on any computer that you can boot Windows PE off to launch the setup. You

can perform multiple installs at once from the same network share, however you won't

have any multicasting support. Multicasting allows the same packet of data to be sent

on the network to many different computers. If you want to be able to use multicast, you

will need to use a system like windows deployment services otherwise known as WDS. WDS is designed

for networks where you have a lot of computers to perform installs on. Because it is aimed

more at enterprise networks, it requires a more infrastructure then the other install

methods. To use WDS you require a domain controller,

DHCP and DNS. The advantage of WDS is that it supports network booting so you don't require

an optic drive to perform the install. Lastly you need a network card that supports PXE.

PXE allow your computer to boot off the network. PXE has been around for a long time so it

is very likely your network card will support it. On some systems, you may need to enable

network booting in the bios before you can use it.

Now that we understand the two methods that you can use to install Windows 7 over the

network, I will switch to my Windows 7 computer to perform a network install.

First of all I will look at installing windows from a network share. To do this, I first

need a Windows PE disk to boot my computer. To create a new Windows PE disk, I need to

install the Windows automated installation kit. This is available for download from the

Microsoft web site. I have already download the tool kit and burn

it to a DVD. Once I insert the DVD I can run the setup program. The install is quiet a

simple one. Select Windows AIK Setup. Accept the license and the install directory and

the software will be installed. The install takes around 5 to 10 minutes but I have sped

up the process so we don't have to wait. Once installed, I need to run the deployment

tools command prompt from the start menu. The difference between this command prompt

and a regular command prompt is that certain variables are set up so that I don't have

know where the program are located in order to run them.

The first command I need to run is CopyPE. cmd. This will copy the necessary files for

Windows PE to a directory of my choosing. In this case I will a 32 bit version of Windows

PE. There are not too many files to copy so the process does not take too long.

Once complete, if I list the directory you can see that a folder called ISO has been

created. If I change into this directory I can now list all the files that will be on

the Window P E disc. If I want to add additional files it is a simple matter of adding them.

For example, if I wanted to add ImageX which is used to deploy a customized Windows 7 image,

I can copy it to the directory like this. I will cover ImageX later on in the course

so don't worry if you don't understand what it does at this point.

If I now go back a directory I am ready to create my image. If I create a ISO image now

it will not work. There seems to be a bug in the Windows 7 AIK. To get around this,

I need to copy the file winpe.wim to the ISO slash sources directory with the file name

boot dot w i m. Now that this is done, I am ready to create

my image. To do this, I use the command OSCDImg. The command has a number of options. The minus

n option allows long file names. Since we are creating a bootable cd you also need the

minus b option. The minus b option specifics a file containing the boot sector needed by

bootable cd's. Lucky for us Microsoft provides us one.

Once I have put in the correct options, all I need to do is enter in the directory containing

the source files which will be the ISO directory and a target file. Once complete, windows

will start creating an ISO image for you. The process does not take too long to complete.

Once done you are free to use any burning software to write the image to a disk.

Now the ISO has been created, I am going to reboot the computer and boot off a Windows

PE disk that I created earlier. You will notice that the boot process is the same as when

I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 using either the DVD or USB thumb drive.

Once windows PE has booted I will get a useable command prompt. From here I can run the command

net use to map a drive to a file server containing the install media. In this case I simply inserted

the DVD into a server and shared it. However if you wanted to make changes to the media

it is a simply matter to copy the contents of the DVD to a directory on your server and

share the directory. Now the drive has been mapped I can run the

setup program. The setup will run exactly the same way as if I had install it from the

DVD. I won't bother going through the setup process as it is essentially the same as the

video I did previously. What I will do however, is reboot the computer and demonstrate installing

Windows 7 using windows deployment services. On this network I have a WDS server set up.

To access WDS, I will switch to my Windows 7 computer and start it up. On this particular

computer I have the option to press F12 to boot from the network. On your computer the

key may be different. If you computer has an integrated network card, you may need to

enable network booting inside the bios. You will see the computer gets and IP address

from the network. It will then prompt you to press F12. Pressing F 12 will cause the

computer to download Windows PE from the network. The following screens look the same as the

other setup methods because whether using the DVD, USB Thumb drive, network or WDS,

windows PE is still loaded to run the setup. Once loaded, the setup menus look a little

different but are essentially the same. Once I have chosen the language I want to use and

then chosen the country and keyboard, I will then be prompted for a user account with access

to the domain. This is ensures the person performing the install has permission.

On the next screen you can choose which operating system you want to install. I have already

added windows server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 to WDS. This is one of biggest advantages

of WDS is that you can use it to deploy more than one operating system. Once I select the

operating system I will be taken to the familiar disk management screen of the setup. Once

I select a drive windows will start installing. So far I have covered how to perform a clean

install of Windows 7 and how to upgrade to Windows 7. However in some cases you not need

to install a new copy of Windows 7. For example if you purchase a new laptop. This brings

us to the topic of our next video, migrating to Windows 7.