Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Welcome back to IT Free Training Windows 7 free training course. In this video I will

  • 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.

Welcome back to IT Free Training Windows 7 free training course. In this video I will

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it