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Pushing MDT 2010 Lite Touch installations to remote clients…

By arwidmark / January 16, 2010

To start a MDT 2010 Lite Touch installation remotely, e.g. without having to visit the machine, you can use the psexec tool (Microsoft / Sysinternals).

In my sample the remote PC is named PC0004 and my deployment server is MDT01. The deployment share is MDTProduction$ and the user account I use for my installations is TSLAB\BuildAccount. That account has administrator rights on the PC0004 machine.

  1. On MDT01, configure the rules (bootstrap.ini and customsettings.ini) on the deploymentshare so that the refresh installation process is fully automated. Below you find a fully automated sample rule set.
     
    Bootstrap.ini
     
    [Settings] Priority=Default
     
    [Default] SkipBDDWelcome=YES
    DeployRoot=\\MDT01\MDTProduction$
    TaskSequenceID=W7-X86-002
     
    UserDomain=TSLAB
    UserID=BuildAccount
    UserPassword=P@ssw0rd
     
     
    Customsettings.ini
     
    [Settings] Priority=Default
     
    [Default] _SMSTSORGNAME=TSLAB
    OSInstall=Y
    DeploymentType=REFRESH
    SkipDeploymentType=YES
    SkipAdminPassword=YES
    SkipProductKey=YES
    SkipComputerName=YES
    SkipDomainMembership=YES
    SkipUserData=YES
    UserDataLocation=AUTO
    SkipLocaleSelection=YES
    SkipTaskSequence=YES
    SkipTimeZone=YES
    SkipApplications=YES
    SkipBitLocker=YES
    SkipSummary=YES
    SkipBDDWelcome=YES
    SkipComputerBackup=YES
    ComputerBackupLocation=NONE
    SkipCapture=YES
    SkipFinalSummary=YES
    TimeZone=004
    TimeZoneName=Pacific Standard Time
     
    JoinDomain=TSLAB
    DomainAdmin=TSLAB\JoinAccount 
    DomainAdminPassword=P@ssw0rd
    MachineObjectOU=ou=Workstations,dc=tslab,dc=net
     
    WSUSServer=http://MDT01
     
  2. Make sure the account used has administrator rights on PC0004. Can be achieved in many ways, I normally use Group Policy and the restricted groups feature to remotely add members to the administrators group on the clients.
     
  3. If the firewall is enabled on PC0004, make sure that the File and Printer Sharing exception is allowed. I use Group Policy for that too.
     
  4. On MTD01, download the PSTools package from Microsoft, extract it, and copy psexec.exe to C:\Windows\System32.
     
  5. On MDT01, in a command prompt (or via a batchfile), execute psexec.exe \\PC0004 -u TSLAB\BuildAccount -p P@ssw0rd cscript.exe \\MDT01\MDTProduction$\Scripts\litetouch.vbs

 / Johan

 

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arwidmark

jhiltabidel - October 22, 2010

I’ve tried this several times and I suppose it’s a user error on my part. I get the below error messages (last two lines). Any advice?

_________________________________________________________
PsExec v1.98 – Execute processes remotely
Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals – http://www.sysinternals.com
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

\mdt01.fu.campusdeploymentshare$scriptslitetouch.vbs(78, 1) (null): This operation requires an interactive window station.

cscript.exe exited on Lab-Lib042-11.fu.campus with error code 0.
_________________________________________________________

I have turned the firewall completely off on the client machine (Lab-Lib042-11) and get the same results. I have confirmed Admin status for the username used and psexec is in the windowssystem32 folder.

Thanks,

Joe

jhiltabidel - October 22, 2010

Resolved by adding -i after psexec.exe. So the complete command line looks like this for me:
psexec.exe -i \Lab-Lib042-11 -u DomainUseraccount -p P@ssw0rd cscript.exe \MDT01DeploymentShare$Scriptslitetouch.vbs

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