After several days of Googleing, e-mailing and calling I turn to the expertice of the MDL forum. My question is rather simple: I you buy a computer with Windows 8 Pro pre-installed by a OEM, and you get the Windows 8 OEM DVD with the computer. Is there any way to import the OEM-image into MDT2012 and deploy this image back to the computer and have it activate with the hardware-embedded license? I've searched the web to the point that my fingertips are almost bleeding, so I really hope someone can give me an answer. To explain more detailed, I present to you my scenario: The company I work for is a big Dell distributor. We sell thousands of computers each year. We also run a service-center for our customers for when they start having trouble. This means that most of our customer's computers will require an re-installation of windows at some point. With Windows 7 we can deploy the Dell OEM-image to computers that came pre-installed with Windows 7 in a few minutes using MDT. We've imported all the Dell-drivers into MDT, as well as some software like MS Office, Adobe Reader etc. After the deployment was done, windows is activated and all is well. This isn't possible with Windows 8. At least not with the same methods as we use with Windows 7. When I contacted Dell they just said "Use the supplied OEM-disk". But it will take forever to manually install all the computers and drivers. I'm guessing that the problem is with both the deployment and the OA 3.0 activation. When I try to deploy the Windows 8 Pro OEM image to a Windows 8 Pro OEM computer, the image somehow "changes" to a retail image and asks for the product key. If I skip entering the product key, the retail installation key (XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-CRYQH) is shown in the activation menu. Anyone got an idea to how and if this can be done? The software I use is Server 2012 with MDT 2012.
I'm not a skilled autounattend-file writer, so I've just found different examples and tried fusing it together. My base file is attached. I have no idea what settings i need... über novice...
Never mind , what did you mean by deploy, [deploy through dism /imagex / imaging software ] ? did you try using set up with ei.cfg with the below content. Spoiler [EditionID] professional [Channel] OEM [VL] 0
BTOR, i have tried to use the ei.cfg on the windows 8 rtm iso from wzor, it keeps saying that iso is in Joliet, not udf, or that the iso is corrupt, i know for sure the iso is not corrupt because i have used it over and over. Is their a certain iso i can use the ei. cfg tool on?
Deploying using Microsoft MDT 2012. it uses ImageX, so it doesn't go through the same installation-process as when you install from a DVD. I'm not currently using the ei.cfg, but i've tried it, and it didn't work. I'll put it back and give it another go.
The deployment works fine. the problem is the activation of OEM Windows. When i install directly from the DVD, it picks up the product key from the UEFI bios. When i deploy using MDT 2012 it don't.
You need to find at what stage windows installation read key from UEFI BIOS & possibly to run that after Imagex deploy . Also remove <ProductKey> part from your file..
just extract the iso and rebuild the iso with oscdimg [options] SourceLocation TargetFile Spoiler with switch -u2 example : oscdimg -bE:\work\X64\boot\etfsboot.com -h -u2 -m -lHRM_CCSA_X64FOEM_EN-US_DV5 E:\work\X64\ E:\work\Win8_64_pro.iso