The nice thing about MDT is you don’t need a lot of hardware, and you can’t screw it up so badly

it’ll
take down your production environment ☺. I run mine from VM’s. In my main office, it’s a standalone
VM. The advantage of this is you can restart it at any time without affecting anyone, because you’re the
only one who’s going to use it. In my smaller satellite office, it’s on a VM that is also the print server,
but I usually make my changes on the main server than copy them over to the satellite server.

The main things to avoid: Don’t install on a DC, and don’t install on a server that already provides DHCP
services. Unneeded complications come from that.

Install MDT
The first thing you should do is make sure you have the latest MDT and ADK. They have recently
released a new version that supports the latest flavours of Windows 10. This is a good guide to get you
started:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/deploy-windows-mdt/prepare-for-windows-
deployment-with-mdt

Deployment Share
Once you have it installed, you’ll want to create a deployment share and add an OS.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/deploy-windows-mdt/create-a-windows-10-
reference-image
For the section labelled “Add the setup files”, what you’ll need is the contents of a Windows 10 ISO (it
doesn’t have to be Windows Enterprise – Pro works just fine). You need to have volume licensing to do
this legally; what I typically do is download the ISO from Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Service Center
(https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/servicecenter/default.aspx) then extract the contents using
7Zip. Use subfolders to keep yourself organized.

Add Drivers
Once you have your base OS imported, you’ll need to add drivers to support your various builds. Use
the command prompt and WMIC to get the various Manufacturers and Models for which you want to
deploy. Use these names to create subfolders (the names MUST match exactly, I’ll show you why in a
bit).
WMIC ComputerSystem GET Manufacturer,Model

You can query remote computers (if you have rights to do so—try it from a server, not your workstation)
by using the /NODE switch. Wrap the computername in quotes so it knows how to deal with special
characters like hyphens.

WMIC /NODE:”computername” ComputerSystem GET Manufacturer,Model

Start with the OS first, then manufacturer, then model, like this:

Also add a WinPE 10 x64 folder (or WinPE 10 x86 if you are doing 32-bit deployments) for storage and
network drivers needed during deployment:
Many manufacturers provide driver packs that make it easy to collect the various WinPE drivers and the
OS drivers:
http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/enterprise-client/w/wiki/2065.dell-command-deploy-driver-
packs-for-enterprise-client-os-deployment
http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x64.html

Add Applications
Any application that you can install without requiring user interaction can be deployed via MDT. Again,
use folders to keep yourself organized.

IT Ninja is a pretty good website for helping you discover the “silent” switches for installs.
http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/the-complete-guide-to-msi-switches-for-silent-software-installation
Anything that is an MSI file can be installed with this sequence:

MSIEXEC /i filename.msi /qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress /norestart

The important thing here is you MUST prevent the application from doing a reboot on its own. This will
throw MDT into a tailspin because it wasn’t expecting the reboot. If the application must be rebooted
to install properly, there’s a checkbox within the application properties that will request MDT to reboot
after installation.

I’ve created several scripts that are OS tweaks that I add to the installation task sequences. I also use
MDT to update computers without doing a complete OS reinstall, so I’ve put these into their own
application subfolders named _Tasks and _Updates.

Application Bundles
Once you have all your applications added, do yourself a favour and create application bundles for each
“type” of user you have. This makes it much easier to select all the applications you need to install, and
ensure you don’t miss something. When new software comes out, you just need to create a new
application then revise the bundle.
Task Sequences
Finally, you’re ready to put it all together. Start with the Standard Client Task Sequence, then tweak it
to your needs. I’ve created my own custom task sequence template based upon this one with all the
steps I regularly add. http://www.danielclasson.com/guide-how-to-create-an-mdt-2013-task-sequence-
template/
When I first started using MDT, I would just blanket deploy all drivers for all computers, which was not
only unnecessary, but sometimes the drivers would conflict and cause deployment failures. In order to
change this, you want to make two changes to the default task sequence.

1. Add a step named Set Driver Group right before the Inject Drivers step in the Preinstall
section. It should be of type General | Set Task Sequence Variable. It assigns a value to
DriverGroup001. The Value should match the folder structure you created in the Out-of-box
Drivers section.
2. Change the Inject Drivers step (just the one under Preinstall—there is another one further
down that doesn’t need to be changed) to choose a selection profile of Nothing (seems counter-
intuitive to me, but this step is necessary otherwise it will override what you did in Step 1):
Here’s a bunch of those OS tweaks I was talking about. It’s a good idea to put those into the OS install
instead of trying to apply the afterwards. Same thing for .NET Frameworks, or C++ libraries that many
applications require.
This guy has lots of helpful info about OS tweaks: https://garytown.com/category/windows-10

You can even get MDT to do BIOS updates (if your manufacturer provides Windows-based, silent
installs). If you get to this step, I can send you the script that I use to accomplish this.

Once you really get going, you can create a custom task that uses BGINFO to change the wallpaper of
the computer so it reports status throughout the build. All those “Update Status” tasks throughout my
task sequence are just updating the wallpaper. MDT provides a built-in script for doing this:
Advanced Configuration
My end goal was to get these deployments to run with as little interaction as possible. To that end, I
created a database with every computer listed, and several roles.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/deploy-windows-mdt/use-the-mdt-database-
to-stage-windows-10-deployment-information

With these extra steps, I can get MDT to name the computer based on my requirements, set the screen
resolution, pick the correct task sequence, etc.

By providing the serial number, MDT can detect which computer it’s working on then apply the correct
settings:
Set the OSDComputerName to whatever name you want for the computer:

Install applications from the bundles you created:

Set common settings and select the correct task sequence:

Windows 10 Professional x64 assigns the computer to the correct OU in Active Directory:

the MAK product key, and the correct Task Sequence:

[Default]
OSInstall=YES
SkipAdminPassword=YES
AdminPassword=password
SkipApplications=YES
SkipBitLocker=YES
SkipCapture=YES
SkipComputerBackup=YES
SkipComputerName=YES
SkipDeploymentType=YES
DeploymentType=NEWCOMPUTER
SkipDestinationDisk=YES
SkipDomainMembership=YES
SkipRoles=YES
JoinDomain=domain
DomainAdmin=admin
DomainAdminDomain=domain
DomainAdminPassword=password
SkipFinalSummary=YES
FinishAction=REBOOT
SkipLocaleSelection=YES
KeboardLocale=en-US
UserLocale=en-CA
UILanguage=en-US
SkipPackageDisplay=YES
SkipProductKey=YES
SkipSummary=YES
SkipTaskSequence=YES
SkipTimeZone=YES
TimeZone=010
TimeZoneName=Mountain Standard Time
SkipUserData=YES
UserDomain=domain
UserID=admin
UserPassword=password
OrgName=your company name
FullName=name to show for computer owner
WsusServer=your local WSUS server’s address for applying Windows
Updates
_SMSTSOrgName=Company name shown during deployment
Monitoring
Once you have everything else working, you can turn on monitoring so MDT will track the progress of all
computer installs. I’ve written a little program that tracks the creating of events in Event Viewer and
emails me the status as well.

Final Steps
Once you have everything completed, right-click on your deployment share and choose Properties. On
the Windows PE tab, select your platform then check off the appropriate options on the General tab:

Note you can also create bootable ISO’s you can put on USB sticks so you don’t have to rely on your
network, but that’s another discussion.

Click OK, then right-click on the deployment share again and select Update Deployment Share. MDT
will create a Lite Touch WIM file that you can then load into WDS under Boot Images.

Once you have this all setup, boot your computer into PXE (for most computers, you do this by pressing
F12 at boot), select the Lite Touch image you created, and sit back while MDT does everything for you. I
have it configured now so I need to spend about 30 seconds per computer, then MDT runs on its own
for 3-4 hours doing all the remaining steps.