WDS stands for Windows Deployment Services.

Tasks

Get a shell during install

shift + F10

Jokes

Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition

Use diskpart to solve the problem.

This Computer’s Hardware May Not Support Booting to This Disk

Swap or remove temporarily other hard drives to let the install happen.

Unattend file

I found that if you use PowerShell then you don’t need to mess with ASCII

So to set the password as “IamAdmin” you add Password to it and thus encode “IamAdminPassword”:

$UnEncodedText = 'IamAdminPassword'
$EncodedText =[Convert]::ToBase64String([System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes($UnEncodedText))
write-host "Encoded_String_is:" $EncodedText

And to decrypt :

$EncodedText = 'SQBhAG0AQQBkAG0AaQBuAFAAYQBzAHMAdwBvAHIAZAA='
$DecodedText = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString([System.Convert]::FromBase64String($EncodedText))
write-host "Decoded_Text_is:" $DecodedText

Just need to remember adding “AdministratorPassword” to the built in Administrator password and “Password” for other accounts.

Tested this on unattended.xml for Win 10 2004

When pending devices get stuck

WDSUTIL /delete-AutoAddDevices /devicetype:PendingDevices
WDSUTIL /delete-AutoAddDevices /devicetype:ApprovedDevices
WDSUTIL /delete-AutoAddDevices /devicetype:RejectedDevices

Pre staging devices

You have to fill in at least the Name and the Device ID.

ID: Device ID is the MAC-Adress, which you can take from the PXE-Boot Screen (but without minus, dashes or anything).

OU: is the OU LDAP path with the machine name.