Window 7 RC has been out for a few weeks now the TLA team has been busy learning and testing all the great new features. Your tip for today is on Windows 7 App Locker. Many of you know about Software Restriction Policies. They allow you to block the execution of a program by file name or hash calculation. Many of you probably also know how it was ...

Now that you have had a few weeks to test out the public Windows 7 beta, it’s time to think about how you’re going to deploy the goodness out to all your users. Fortunately the fine people at the Microsoft’s Solutions Accelerator group are on the ball. Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is already in beta. This edition of MDT will provide support ...

A few weeks ago I posted about some of the tools Microsoft provides to help establish the costs and saving that deploying Vista can bring. One of the issues that I have is how do we get the numbers to fill in those forms; well MS has you covered there too. This tool is really useful. With the MS Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator you ...

I have had a lot of people ask me about capturing a custom image manually using ImageX. First before I go into details on how to do this let me just point out a few things first. 1) You can use the process we went through previously to recapture a custom iteratively. Meaning you can slowly build up your image as you like using the custom tasks ...

BDD allows you to automate the installation of base applications as part of the image building or deployment process. This is really useful if your company can't afford an application management suite like SMS or Alteris. This functionality is also helpful if you want to automate the way a base application is installed in your image (for ...

This post will go over adding an XP WIM image to your BDD 2007 server and installing XP from a WIM based build. First make sure that your Windows XP was properly installed. BDD will bring your through the basic install launched from the GUI. Next you will see the text based installation:  Finally the GUI setup portion will ...

Many people are interested in the utilities and features offered in Windows Vista deployment tools. They are also very interested in the new BDD framework. What many people don't realize is that you can use many of the Vista deployment tools to manage and configure Windows XP images. The following guide will get you on your way to ...

Deploying BDD is a big project. One of the first elements, and a huge time saver, is installing WDS. This tool allows us to stream down a copy of Windows PE 2.0 to your clients so that you can launch the installation process in a 32 or 64 bit environment. This allows for much faster network transfer as PXE is 16 bit, and not really well ...

BDD 2007 is Microsoft's new framework of tools to deploy Windows Vista and XP. The great thing about BDD 2007 is that you can put it in place now for your XP builds, and when you're ready to start dropping Vista into your environment you'll be ready with the best tools and methods! Now for the hard part: Building your BDD environment is a bit ...