How to start a deployment directly from a Windows 7 client?

Iron Contributor

Hello and greetings from Portugal,

 

Now...I know this may be a stupid question but after years of MDT deployment never tried this...

Is it possible to launch an MDT deployment directly from a Windows 7 machine.

 

What I mean is...instead of a PXE or USB boot, being on a Windows 7 Client and start a deploy from MDT?

 

Thanks in advance!

5 Replies

Hi there,

 

I have also worked with MDT and with SCCM in an Enterprise environment.

As you know with SCCM it is possible to trigger an Task Sequence directly from the activ OS.

What will happen then is that the PE will be stored to the HDD and after a reboot it will directly load the PE and start the Task Sequence from SCCM.

 

If something similar is also working for MDT could be but I think you have to manually edit your task sequences to do so.

 

May be you find a solution here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/mdt/whats-new-in-mdt

There are many examples for different scenarios.

 

best regards

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for your reply Marcel!
Yes that was exactly what I was thinking but...couldn't find any example of that being done with MDT and without SCCM :(

To start a deployment from the existing Windows 7 client, map a drive to the deployment share and then run LiteTouch.vbs from that share, e.g.:

 

net use Z: \\server\DeploymentShare$

cscript.exe z:\Scripts\LiteTouch.vbs

 

All Lite Touch task sequences are designed to be run in this way (to do a refresh/wipe-load deployment), as well as a bare metal deployment (initiated from media, PXE, etc.).

 

That should be covered extensively in the MDT documentation.  If you can't find that in the docs, let me know.

Hi Michael,

Huge fan for years! :)
Errr...really? As easy as that?

Strange I didn't find any so direct about that but I think my mind is so so trained to use pxe boot that didn't tried it.

I'll try this tomorrow at work and give some feedback.

Best Regards,
Diogo

Thanks Michael,

 

I was not aware that it is so easy :)