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Our client PCs have different configurations for different departments. We used to pick up few PCs from each department to create a monthly Windows image by using Windows backup utility, but this way is not efficient and taking huge amount of space on our server. So we would like to keep only one windows image for each department. The software we installed on PCs have updates and changes all the time, So our backup image also must be up-to-date ASAP.

What can I use to add these changes and updates to existing windows image?

There are just too many tools to choose....Windows AIK? ADK? MDT? System Center? WSUS? These are deployment tools, well also including image build tools, My main concern is the tool that can update the existing windows image.

Any idea which one is better?


BTW, what I do now is adding an extra HHD to each PC and hide it, use it for weekly image back only. so instead of backing up image to server, everything is on local PC and then I copy only few images back to server in case something happens....I know this is not professional way to do it but our users must have their own settings, it is painful to manage huge amount of images...

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  • No comments at all?
    – Root Loop
    May 1, 2014 at 17:48

1 Answer 1

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I typically use MDT for tasks like this. There are two main processes, one is 'build and capture' and the other deployment.

First, get all your applications in MDT and build a task sequence that lets you select the installs for a particular department (or use an application bundle per department). Using this, you can capture an image for each department or build on the fly. If you capture an image, you can create a second task sequence that deploys then installs all the latest patches/updates in one procedure.

Microsoft provided patches can typically be installed offline with DISM... this is not possible for MSI/EXE based installations/updates.

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