How to Capture an Image from a Reference Computer Manually

How to Capture an Image from a Reference Computer Manually In this post we will see how to capture an image from a reference computer manually. You could use this procedure to capture an operating system image from a reference computer by using capture media. This method basically creates a CD that allows you to capture a reference system outside of a task sequence. However the image is not bootable and you must initiate it from within an installed OS using the Autoplay function or by manually running TSMBAutorun from the SMS>bin>i386 folder.

Requirements

To build the reference computer, the reference computer must meet the following requirements:

1) The computer must be a member of a WORKGROUP. If you try capturing the domain joined computer, Sysprep will fail.

2) The local Administrator password must be blank.

3) You must have administrative credentials on the reference computer to capture an image.

4) The computer shouldn’t have the Configuration Manager client installed. If its installed uninstall it. Note that this is not a strict requirement, but makes preparing the image easier.

5) The system’s security policy must not require strong passwords.

How to Capture an Image from a Reference Computer Manually

As mentioned in the requirements, the reference computer should not be a part of domain. Ensure that the computer is in WORKGROUP.

Open the ConfigMgr Console. Click on Software Library > Operating Systems > right click Task Sequences. Click on Create Task Sequence Media.

Select Capture media. Click Next.

On the Media Type page, specify the type of media that you want to use for the capture media. You can specify a USB flash drive or CD or DVD set as the media type. If you specify a USB flash drive, make sure that the device is connected to the computer so that the necessary files can be written directly to the device. To specify the Media file, click on Browse, browse to the location where you want to create the media file, and type the name of the media file to be created. The file name should have ISO as extension. Click Next.

Select the boot image that should be associated with the media. Click Browse to specify the computer architecture to be targeted with the captured image in the Select a Boot Image dialog box. Boot images must be available on one or more distribution points. Click Next.

The Create Task Sequence Media Wizard is complete. Click on Close.

To verify whether the ISO image is created successfully, open the CreateTSMedia log file (Located at C >Program Files (x86)>Microsoft Configuration Manager>AdminConsole>AdminUILog)  file and look for the lines.

“ISO image created successfully at “media location”

 “CreateMedia: success”

 

To create capture media, use an appropriate software application to burn the ISO file to CD media or DVD media. In my case the reference machine is a VM and I will be editing the VM settings > CD or DVD Options > Select Use ISO Image file > Provide the path where ISO file located. As the computer is in workgroup, to access the ISO file, authentication is required. Specify an account that has permissions to access the file. Once the ISO file is mounted click OK.

On the Autoplay window, click Run TSMBAutorun. If you don’t see the Autoplay window then you need to manually launch TSMBAutorun from the SMS>bin>i386 folder.

On the welcome page click Next.

Choose the destination where the captured OS should be stored. The file name can be anything but it should have wim as extension. Next, enter the user account details which has got enough permissions to write the wim file to the specified location. Click Next.

Specify some information related to image. Click Next.

On the Summary page verify the information and click Finish.

The image capture starts the process by carrying out a Sysprep of the computer. The computer now boots into Windows PE.

There you go !! The Image capture process is running.

The image has been captured successfully and we have the wim file with us. The machine now restarts and enters the Windows Out of Box experience. After the image capture is completed you could add the captured image to ConfigMgr as an image package and can then be deployed on target computers by using operating system deployment.