Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Image Upkeep

Image upkeep involves either refreshing an image to include new items such as Windows and other software updates or completely new software applications, configurations, or customizations. Because your images should be hardware agnostic, you should never have to re-create or update them for new hardware or system models.

If you use Build and Capture task sequences to create your images, image upkeep is a matter of updating the task sequence as appropriate and rerunning it. For updates delivered using the built in software updates functionality of ConfigMgr, you won't even have to update the task sequence; simply re-run the task sequence. Using Build and Capture task sequences also ensures your image is built cleanly every time instead of working from a previous installation of Windows that may or may not be clean or could be in some unknown state.

If you choose to create your images manually, upkeep is somewhat more complicated and involves more manual work. If you haven't planned correctly, this may actually involve building your entire image from scratch again.

If you insist on manually creating and maintaining your images, an advanced technique is to use the restore point capabilities of your virtualization software. Using this technique, you create multiple save states including just before you prepare the system for imaging. This way, you can easily restore the state of the system to any point in time including just before it was sysprepped, make your desired changes including adding the latest Windows updates, and then sysprep and capture it-being sure to create another save state so that you can return to it in the future.

Returning to a save state before the sysprep is important, particularly with Windows 7 images.

• With Windows XP, many people simply redeployed their image, made their changes, sysprepped, and recaptured the system. Although this technically worked, it is discouraged for several reasons; the main reason not to do this is because re-sysprepping a system can and often does result in odd, unexplained behavior. This is well documented over the past decade; the best solution is to always use a clean system to install a fresh copy of Windows.
• With Windows 7, re-sysprepping is even more problematic because of the need to activate it. Windows 7 activation can be re-armed three times-sysprepping does not reset this counter and actually uses one of the possible re-arms. This means that you cannot re-sysprep a Windows 7 reference image more than three times. You could sysprep a Windows system without re-arming activation using the -skiprearm option, but this option does not reset the grace period for Windows activation, which can also be problematic.

This means you should not re-sysprep a system unless you like troubleshooting odd, one-off issues. And of course, always thoroughly test the new image to ensure you didn't break anything.

Offline Software Updates

Whether you use a Build and Capture task sequence to automatically build your images or manually build your images, a great new feature of ConfigMgr 2012 is the ability to install updates directly into an image contained in a WIM file. This functionality isn't actually new as it has existed in the stand-alone DISM tool from the beginning, but incorporating it directly into the ConfigMgr console makes it more accessible, enables it to leverage the software updates functionality of ConfigMgr itself, and makes it schedulable.

The only prerequisite for installing updates offline is that you have a properly installed and configured software update point. Note that not all updates can actually be installed using this facility: only updates for Windows 7 itself can be installed. Specifically, only updates that are part of the Component-Based Servicing (CBS) model are available for installation offline-for more information on CBS.

To initiate offline updates, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Software Library → Overview → Operating Systems → Operating System Images . Select the image you want to update from the list of images on the right, and choose Schedule Updates from the ribbon bar or right-click context menu to launch the Update Operating System Image Wizard.
2. On the Choose Updates page, select from the available updates. As mentioned above, only updates in a deployment package and that are CBS updates are available for selection. You can filter by architecture and by a simple filter box.
3. On the Set Schedule page, choose either to install updates as soon as possible or at a custom time.

Based on the schedule you set, ConfigMgr creates a copy of the image, mounts this image copy, automatically installs the updates you selected into the image, and moves the updated image back to its original location. In general, this process is not overly intensive but should still be scheduled after hours to avoid adversely affecting ConfigMgr's performance and avoid affecting active deployments. To allow for testing, it is best to create a full duplicate OS image package including a duplicate WIM to which to install the updates.