ECS Computer Solutions, Christchurch

Currently I am entrusted with developing a Windows 7 Professional Image for deployment and have until recently been stuck with getting the default user profile to ‘keep’ pinned start menu items.

While I was copying them to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu they still wouldn’t show up. There is actually a complementary Registry key which makes the magic happen. So without further ado: How to set Pinned Start Menu Items for Default Profile in Windows 7 (more…)

Upon Sysprep-ing our first test image of Windows 7 using an unattend.xml our WDS enviroment would produce the error ‘Windows could not apply unattended settings during pass (null).’ At first I thought my unattend.xml file was wrong BUT the actual problem was that WDS was using a Windows Vista Image for the Image Deployment. The required fix was copy boot.wim from the Windows 7 DVD\Sources directory and add that to the ‘Boot Images’ within WDS. After that you PXE boot as per normal and select your newly appointed image!

This post was inspired by this blog post

After a colleague of mine installed WDS at a client site they found that certain laptops and desktop PCs would not be able to pick up the images that have been captured.

The problem lies in the HAL Type of the PC that was captured and then WDS finds the HAL type for the PC asking for an image and if one doesn’t match then you will most probably get the error: “There are no images available”

My scenario was that we had a generic image built and working for Single CPU and MultiCPU PCs but only the Multiple / Newer PCs could see the image in WDS - that is because the HAL type was “Advanced Configuration and power interface (ACPI) PC” but these older PCs were being recognised as Uniprocessor HAL Types.

The solution: Get the image onto the Older PC type (via Ghost or Clonezilla etc) login to the system. Download DevCon and extract into C:\Windows or any other %PATH% variable you like.
Then run:
devcon sethwid @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 := +acpiapic_up !acpiapic_mp
devcon update c:\windows\inf\hal.inf acpiapic_up

Reboot and Login two times then Sysprep and capture again!

Hopefully your good to go!

Reference: http://www.ngohq.com/processors/11891-how-to-update-the-hal-without-reinstalling-windows.html

Keywords: WDS, Force HALs, Force HAL, Windows Deployment Services, WDS, ACPI Multiprocessor PC, acpiapic_up, acpiapic_mp, No Images after Capture, Change HAL Type