I was getting the error message “Error: 0xc1420117” when I tried unmounting a wim file.

To give you a little background about my machine…

It’s is a Windows 2012R2 server with WDS, MDT installed. I installed MDT I needed to install Microsoft ADT which also includes Dism.

If you open a command and run dism the program just runs.

After a little bit of fooling around, I noticed the system had TONS of dism files on it. To resolve the issue you need to run the most up-to-date version. A way to check which dism files are on your computer is to open a command prompt and type:

• dir C:\dism.exe /s /a

The output will look similar. Notice how the file in the C:\deploymentShare\Servicing\x64 has the most recent file where as the Windows\System32 dism file was made back in 2014.

Using the most recent version of dism I then ran the commands:

• dism /Cleanup-Mountpoints

• dism /unmount-wim /mountdir:C:\dismmount /discard

NOTE – My mount drive is “C:\Dismount”

Hopefully, this will help you successfully fix your Dism Error: 0xc1420117

You can save a ton of bandwidth by using Multicast with WDS. Multicast allows a server to send out a stream of data. Each machine “listening” to that stream can latch onto that stream. This allows for the Multicast server to send a single data stream out while multiple machines listen in and copy that data.

Say for example a WDS server has to stream a 4GB .wim file to each machine. If you didn’t use Multicast it would need to send 4GB x The number of clients you are wanting to image.

If you used Multicast that server would only have to send out 4GB. This last statement is mostly true as long as you do a scheduled cast. If you do an automatic cast the number would be greater as each new machine that boots up after the first would have missed parts of the stream and the WDS server would have to re-stream the parts that were missed.

It is because of this I find that scheduling a multicast to be more efficient. I normally schedule the task to start transmission once all machines have finished the PXE boot.

This post is going to assume that you already setup WDS.

Please enter a descriptive name for the Multicast Transmission… Please see how I named my task.

Specify the install image

Here is where you can schedule the cast. If you have 10 machines. Put 10 machines in the Threshold. If you have 20 machines put 20 as the threshold. Doing this allows the server to wait until all machines have connected. It allows the server to send out a single stream which helps cut down on errors.

This last screen just lets you know how you configured the transmission.

Now that you have created the transmission you can start PXE booting the machines. The server will wait for the number of machines you specified in the wizard. What happens however if one of the brand new machines arrives dead and you only have X-1 machines?

If you right click the Multicast Transmission item you can select “Start” and this will force the multicast session to start.

One thing you could do in the previous version of WDS is you could select the network speed at which the images would stream at. To do this you would Right click the server:

Go to the Network Tab and select the speed that you would want WDS to use. If you changed this item it would only apply AFTER you restarted the WDS service.

In Windows 2008R2 and greater these options are greyed out. Microsoft recommends that you just leave it as so. However if you really must specify the speed at which the WDS server multicast streams you must make manual changes to the registry.

If you want to read the reasoning behind the changes I found an article that sums everything up nicely here: Microsoft Blog WDS

This post will go over “How to Sysprep & Capture a Windows 10 Image for Windows Deployment Services (WDS)”.

I am going to assume that you have WDS up and running already. If not you might want to check out my other post on how to setup WDS.

Since my last post on WDS I have added a Windows 10 Enterprise Install and Boot “.wim”

The reason why I needed to show you those last two screenshots is that you capture an image based off a “Gold” level image file you have already loaded into WDS.

How to Capture an image in WDS

You need to click on “Boot Images” and then Right click the image you want to make a capture of.

In the Wizard that opens up fill it out like so. I changed the name from “Setup” to “Capture”.  Also the location and file name is where you want the image to be created! You don’t want to be linking to a real .wim file here. I copy and paste the image name into the location/name box.

The Wizard will begin to capture an image and save it.

Click “add image” and “finish”.

It will then pop-up a window asking where the image is that you want to add. It will be pre-filled out and will be in the same location you specified.

Accept the defaults and hit “Next”.

Next

You will see it working.

Hit Finish

Verify the file is there in Explorer:

There are several things we need to do now.

1. Install a clean version of Windows 10 on a machine.
2. Install some extra 3rd party apps
3. Make an image of the updated Machine so that we can use it over and over on other machines.

Because we’ve installed a machine before using WDS I will only show you what has changed.

After saying to boot from PXE you will now see that there are several boot images you can select. Because we want to use the “Gold” version we will select the first item.

Much like last time you will be asked to install the image using Domain credentials. Enter them

Select Windows 10

As the wizard progresses just accept the defaults. When the Machine boots up you will be able to log into the machine as the domain admin.

The first thing you will want to do is install some 3rd party applications that you want as part of the image. In my case I downloaded 4 items that I thought would serv as a good example.

• Adobe Reader
• The GIMP
• Notepad ++
• Wireshark

I won’t bore you with install screenshots. Just believe me when I say I have them installed.

Now that everything is installed you need to sysprep the machine in order to make the machine imagable. Sysprep can be found in the “C:\Windows\System32\Sysprep” folder.

You want to make sure the System Cleanup is set to OOBE. You also want to make sure Generalize and Shutdown is selected. It is important to select “Generalize” is checked because it will remote any unique identifiers from the machine like Serial number and SID. It is also important to make sure shutdown is selected. If the machine reboots it will start the wizard to setup the machine. If it starts the machine will create a new SID so the whole clean up will have been for nothing.

You will see something like this:

Make sure to set the machine to boot from the network with PXE then let then machine boot. Hit “ENTER” and “ENTER” to get to this screen. You want to use the “Capture” image.

You will notice it will start booting from the image you created.

The WDS image capture Wizard will start. I’ve highlighted the most important parts of the note. Click “NEXT”

Specify the drive directory to capture. Make sure to name the image really well and click “NEXT”

Fill out the setting like so. You will need to authenticate to the server

The imaging process will then start when you hit next. this is what will look like. The time for this process is fairly long and depends on network and hard drive speeds on both ends.

It will eventually finish. Click “Finish”.

It’s a good idea to verify that the client uploaded the .wim file correctly to the WDS server. To verify that the file has been uploaded open the WDS tool and go to the “workstations” group. The file you just made should be there!

The machine that you syspreped and captured it’s image will have rebooted now. You will notice that the machine will start to go through the setup wizard. The machine is now ready to go.

It’s important for us to now to test the newly captured .wim file on another machine. Once we have verified it works it doesn’t matter how many other machines we will want to have this image.

Boot the new machine up with PXE boot and select “Microsoft Windows 10 Setup (x64)”

Setup should now start. Choose the local and keyboard input

Enter the proper credentials:

Select the new image you just created

Specify the location

The process will start

This is normally a good sign! The streaming process has begun!

The machine will reboot

You will be asked to enter some very basic info

The machine will do the reset auto-magically!

If you ever have an issue like the error “Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.” you will want to try hitting Shift-f10. Then typing:

• CD C:\windows\system32\oobe    [hit enter]
• msoobe  [hit enter]

Restart the virtual machine and make sure that you have the proper language and country/region entered.

 

More to Come!

 

 

If you haven’t checked out this post yet you might want to in order to see “How to setup WDS (Windows Deployment Services)“. Once you have a running copy of WDS you can then proceed with this post.

I will be doing the install on a Hyper-V virtual machine but the process will be identical on real hardware or on other virtual machine software.

I will specify “Generation 2”

Enter 1024MB for memory. On machines with low memory, you might want to use “Dynamic Memory” as well.

Put the VM on the same network as the WDS server

Put the VM in a location that has lots of space.

Tell Hyper-V you want to install the OS using the network.

Verify that the machine will be installed from the network.

When you start up the Virtual machine you will see a couple of things. First you should see the mention of “PXE Boot”.

Then you will be shown the “WDS Boot Manager”. You must hit “ENTER” pretty fast otherwise you will need to hit “Enter” again to get back to this screen.

WDS will show you the Boot.wim very quickly

The setup of the OS will start.

You will be asked to authenticate yourself

You will need to pick the OS

The rest of the wizard will look like your typical OS install.

It will wait on the server for a few seconds and then the install will go through

Specify the settings and hit “NEXT”.

Agree to the terms

Enter Password

You will see that when the machine reboots it will be already joined to the Domain

You can verify that the machine is on the domain. First check the name of the client machine.

** NOTE **

Notice that it is called the name of the person who installed the client plus the #1. The next time I were to install a client it would be the same except that the number will increment each time. If you don’t like this you can change this option in WDS.

As you can see the computer is joined to the domain.