Custom Windows 10 build

[vitukass]

Good day lads, may you suggest to me a software or a way to create  custom windows image. Its way too much work to track every single laptop separately in our organisation. So Idea is to make single copy of windows on one pc with all necessary changes in desktop environment, registry, drivers and most important part with preinstalled sofware like office package, video and sound editing. And pack everything to a single iso to use it on another machine. It would be really cool to monitor those distributions on the network like to track changes in activity of software changes, and deploy updates of software if needed.

 

 

 

 

TL;DR how to create custom windows distribution with programs, drivers, configuration already in it.

[NelizMastr]

WDS and MDT are what you're looking for. If you have a Windows server already, then you're basically set. 

 

One caveat is that if you also deploy drivers, you'll want to use limited hardware configurations, or make a per-model image.

[homeap5]

You can also install Windows, configure everything you want (without product key), install required programs and update everything. The image your Windows (using bootable Macrium Reflect - USB rescue) and restore that image to any other drive you want. This method is ultra fast - restoring windows to SSD is about 3-4 minutes with basic sets of programs (browsers, players, viewers etc.).

 

But of course it's not professional solution like @NelizMastr propose. It may be only less time consuming if number of installations is not so big.

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, homeap5 said:

You can also install Windows, configure everything you want (without product key), install required programs and update everything. The image your Windows (using bootable Macrium Reflect - USB rescue) and restore that image to any other drive you want. This method is ultra fast - restoring windows to SSD is about 3-4 minutes with basic sets of programs (browsers, players, viewers etc.).

 

But of course it's not professional solution like @NelizMastr propose. It may be only less time consuming if number of installations is not so big.

The "without product key" is indeed important here. In an active directory domain, you might face some issues regarding the SID, though, when the image isn't sysprepped.

[vitukass]

Active directory would be cool, i had some experience with it in my college year, but it require to be connected on the  same network, and windows server AD needs to be up  all the time. As I can see now the only option is to build windows image distribution separately just with all programs needed and install drivers for each computer exclusively, because we have three kid of laptops with different hardware and graphics drivers would be painful part i guess.

 

But how custom distributions are packed back to ISO? I am talking about those times then you download windows iso from TPB or somewhere else, and they are already with preinstalled software?

 

but now i am seriously looking forward to make windows restore image just  for the option for things like to have a remote disk drive already mapped by default in a image.

[homeap5]

You may restore image to different computer using Macrium Reflecf image as I wrote. Windows detects new hardware at first boot and everything will work perfect. Just don't make image od running system, do it on second computer or by usb bootable macrium rescue usb.