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Windows Imaging - Deploy Windows Image

Start your imagin' !

Now that we have captured our Master Image, let's deploy it out to some Windows machines.

Associate an image to machines

You can associate a Windows image to a previously enrolled FileWave Client or to a "bare-metal" machine using a Placeholder. If you are going to use a Placeholder, please follow steps 1-6 of this section to learn more.

  1. Open FileWave Central and navigate to "Imaging".
  2. Drag-n-drop your new Image to either an individual device or a group of devices.
  3. Confirm the imaging associations.
  4. You should now see your new image association in the bottom pane of the "Imaging" tab.
  5. "Update Model" to save your changes.
  6. Your image will now be downloaded to the FileWave IVS.
  7. Verify that the FileWave IVS has gotten the latest Model via "Preferences > Imaging", select your FileWave IVS, and click "Monitor".
    • You should see the image download progress from the FileWave Server to the FileWave IVS.
    • The image will persist on the FileWave IVS as long as there's at least one Association made to that image.
  8. Once the image has completed downloading, proceed to PXE Booting your Windows machines.

Confirm Imaging Association.png

Imaging Association.png

Downloading Image Fileset.png

PXE Boot target machines

  1. Verify that your target machine is set to Network Boot and is on the same subnet as the FileWave IVS.
  2. PXE boot your target machine.
    • If using Legacy BIOS, you will see progress text as the PXELinux environment is loading.
    • If using UEFI, please be patient as no boot progress while be shown, only a black screen.
  3. You should now see a blue screen showing progress as it restores each partition from the FileWave IVS.
  4. After the restore, you will see a black screen with white text.
  5. The machine should automatically reboot into Windows and start the Out of Box Experience determined by your Unattended Answer File.
    • If you get a message similar to "no boot media found" after reboot, please reboot again and ensure the machine is not set to Network/PXE boot.
  6. Since the Master Image contained the FileWave Client, it should start communicating with FileWave immediately.

Solve Client Conflicts

After a Windows machine finishes imaging and checks into FileWave, it may conflict with its previous Client enrollment. Please follow the steps to resolve conflicts with any newly imaged machine.

  1. Open FileWave Central and navigate to "Clients".
  2. Select "New Client" from the black menubar.
  3. Select "Desktop Clients" from the "Devices waiting for enrollment section".
  4. Locate and select the Client that is reporting a conflict and click the "Solve Conflict" button.
  5. Select one of the following options that best suites your situation.

    • Remove the new client

      • Select this option if you want to refuse the client for now. You can fix the device identifier and re-enroll it later

    • Remove the old client and enroll the new client

      • Select this option if the old entry is obsolete and can be safely removed; all clones will be removed

    • Replace the old client with the new client (recommended)

      • Select this option if you want the new client to replace the existing entry (this will take over the old record with all clones, associations, etc.)
  6. Your newly imaged Windows Client should began checking into FileWave and download any Filesets previously associated to the Client entry.
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