MDT 2013 Update 1 Now Available

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2013 Update 1 is now available on the Microsoft Download Center. This update requires the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 10, available on the Microsoft Hardware Dev Center. (Scroll to the bottom of the page to the section, “Customize, assess, and deploy Windows on your hardware.” The page also includes other Windows kits; remember for deployment you only need the Windows ADK for Windows 10.)

Significant changes in MDT 2013 Update 1:

  • Support for the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 10
  • Support for deployment and upgrade of Windows 10
  • Support for integration with System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1 with the Windows 10 ADK (seethis post on the Configuration Manager Team blog for more information on using the Windows 10 ADK with Configuration Manager)

Here is a more detailed list of some specific changes in this release:

  • Support for new Enterprise LTSB and Education editions of Windows 10
  • Support for modern app (.appx) dependencies and bundles
  • Improved support for split image files (.swm)
  • Switched to using DISM for imaging processes (instead of deprecated ImageX)
  • Deployment Workbench revisions for deprecated content
  • Enhanced accessibility within the Deployment Workbench
  • Revised lists of time zones, regions and languages in the Deployment Wizard
  • Removed Start menu shortcut for “Remove PXE Filter”
  • Several MVP recommended fixes for Windows Updates, password handling, and PowerShell cmdlets
  • Added missing OOBE settings to Unattend.xml
  • Unattend.xml default screen resolution changed to allow for automatic scaling
  • Updated task sequence binaries from System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager SP1
  • New GetMajorMinorVersion function for integer comparison of Windows version numbers

Microsoft Office Lens for IOS, Android & Windows Phone

Office Lens trims, enhances and makes pictures of whiteboards and docs readable, and saves them to OneNote. You can use Office Lens to convert images to PDF, Word and PowerPoint files too.    Office Lens is like having a scanner in your pocket. Like magic, it will digitalize notes on whiteboards or blackboards. Always find important documents or business cards. Sketch your ideas and snap a picture for later. Don’t lose receipts or stray sticky notes again!   

What’s new:
– Now you can convert your pictures to PDF files with selectable text, in addition to Word and PowerPoint files, and save them to OneDrive. 

Scenarios:
– Capture and crop a picture of a whiteboard or blackboard and share your meeting notes with co-workers.
– Make digital copies of your printed documents, business cards or posters and trim them precisely.
– Printed text will be automatically recognized (using OCR) so you can search for words in images and copy and edit them.  

Features:
– With Whiteboard mode, Office Lens trims and cleans up glare and shadows.
– With Document mode, Office Lens trims and colors images perfectly.
– Pictures are saved to your camera roll and also directly into OneNote, so you can see the images across all your devices.
– Choose to convert images to PDF (.pdf), Word (.docx), or PowerPoint (.pptx) files that are automatically saved to OneDrive.   
Note: Office Lens requires logging in with your Microsoft Account. Your Microsoft Account must be same as the one registered on your device.

Windows ADK for Windows 10

ownload the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 10 to get the new and improved deployment tools used to automate a large-scale deployment of Windows 10. The Windows ADK includes:

  • Windows Imaging and Configuration Designer (Windows ICD) to customize Windows 10 images
  • The Windows Assessment Toolkit and the Windows Performance Toolkit to assess the quality and performance of systems or components
  • Several tools that are designed to help you deploy Windows

Learn about what’s new in the Windows ADK for Windows 10

Download the Windows ADK for Windows 10

How to speed up PXE boot in WDS (MDT)

 

During a PXE boot, when the boot image file is being loaded in the client, it should not take any longer than a few minutes time depending on the size of the boot.wim and your network. If it seems that your PXE boot times are extremely slow, you may be able to speed up the process by increasing the TFTP block size. This article will show you how to speed up PXE boot in WDS and SCCM.

Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is the network protocol used for downloading all files during network boots. TFTP is an inherently slow protocol because it requires one ACK (acknowledgment) packet for each block of data that is sent. The server will not send the next block in the sequence until the ACK packet for the previous block is received. As a result, on a slow network, the round-trip time can be very long.

Change the Maximum Block Size to 16784 on your WDS server Winking smile

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MDT v.Next Coming….

New core tools

Windows 10 ADK supports Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 deployments.

Windows Image Configuration Designer (WICD), pronounced Wicked ?   🙂  Is supposed to be able to build a customized mobile or desktop image, and also create provisioning packages that allow you to customize a Windows device, without re-imaging.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit v.Next (MDT) (standalone)

New upcoming version of MDT is in development, not much info presented yet, but a few items were mentioned in the session:

Windows 10 Deployment and Upgrade Support, as well as updated Task Sequence binaries

Removed deprecated components from Deployment Workbench, and making OSD more accessibility compliant.

MDT documentation will be on TechNet (removed legacy help file and DOCX)

Clean Up your template before Sysprep and Capture a reference image in MDT

When you create a reference Image it will in most cases it will be updated with patches. That will make the image bigger and bigger and there fore the deployment of that image will take longer and consume more network resources & unneeded disk space. That can be corrected by getting rid of superseded patches, junk, temp files and much more.

The Solution

Since MDT is the preferred method to create reference images you can download the script, import it as an application and then run the application just before the Sysprep and Capture step. The Script works for the following versions of Windows:

  • Windows 7 SP1
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 8.1 Update
  • Windows Server 2008 2 SP1
  • Windows Server 2012
  • Windows Server 2012 R2

To make this work in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 you need to add a hotfix to Packages in MDT. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2852386

Download the script

Download the script from here: Mirror Mirror 2

Action-CleanupBeforeSysprep Applicationimage

Task Sequenceimage

Created a Group Clean.
Add install a application –> Action-CleanUpBeforeSysprep
Restart Computer (Very Important) without it will not work

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