Slow Imaging on Surface Pro 4
We're getting about 1,000 Surface Pro 4's in over the next couple of months. I'm trying to speed up the image time some. It is currently taking about 2 hours just to "Apply Image". I've played around with the KBE some to try and decrease the time. I have just the Win 10 drivers, and the USB NIC drivers in the KBE. I've also have tried just using the Surface Pro drivers, with the USB NIC. Other machines using the same KBE, and image take half the time with the same hard drive size. The NIC I'm using is below, and I'm thinking that's my only hold up. I'm curious as to what everyone else is using?
3 Comments
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have you tried hard setting the port you are connecting the dongle to on the switch to a gig and see if it connects and works. I have had problems with the star tech negotiating speed properly on win 10pe - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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I have not. The ports I'm using to test with I'm limited on what I can do. I have some in my test lab I can work with though. What USB are you using? - dugullett 8 years ago
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we have a couple of the 3.0 ones you have for yoga's and a bunch of USB21000S2's for other ones - SMal.tmcc 8 years ago
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I am experiencing the same issues... Imaging using the Dock or USB dongle. I have verified connecting at a gig. Any other thoughts? - rmcmullen 8 years ago
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I am having the same concern. tried with the Surface Pro Dongle and the Startech 3.0 with no joy. Still takes 3-4 hours. Opened a ticket with KACE. Will circle back once I get an answer. - anonymous_128529 8 years ago
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Are you using a KBE with the Win 10 drivers? I honestly haven't tested with my older KBE. I was going to try that next. - dugullett 8 years ago
Answers (4)
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Posted by:
dugullett
8 years ago
Top Answer
What seems to be working so far is creating a 40 GB partition as a preinstall task, and then running a DISKPART Extend command as a post install task. This took my image time from 3.5 hours to about 36 minutes. I'm still doing a lot of testing, but from what I can see it's working. I'm not sure if support has an official answer as of yet?
Preinstall Task - 40 GB Partition:
Select disk 0
Clean
Convert gpt
Create partition efi size=200
Assign letter=s
Format quick fs=FAT32
Create partition msr size=128
Create partition primary size=40000
Assign letter=c
Format quick fs=NTFS
Exit
Post Install Task (Type Application):
.bat file
@echo off
DISKPART /s "extend.txt"
extend.txt (in my case it was partition 3)
select disk 0
select partition 3
extend
Comments:
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Can you go into a bit more detail on how to create this post install task? - kari.collier 8 years ago
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1. I created an extend.txt file that had the information below in it.
select disk 0
select partition 3
extend
2. I also created an install.cmd file that had this info below in it.
@echo off
DISKPART /s "extend.txt"
I zipped these two files together.
I then logged in to the K2000 selected Post-Installation>Choose Action>Add Application. I uploaded the the ZIP file under "upload file", and for the parameter I entered install.cmd which is what I named the file in step 2. - dugullett 8 years ago-
Thank you so much. This worked like a charm. - kari.collier 8 years ago
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Thank you so much. You saved me 4 in half hrs. - joeysparrow 8 years ago
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No problem. Since this post I've actually lowered the partition to 30000. It should depend on the size of your image, but lowering it by 10 GBs helped. - dugullett 8 years ago
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dugullett, Are you also using the KACE default "Create UEFI Partitions" preinstallation DISKPART task (or custom version of) in addition to your own, or your letting Win 10 create the Recovery partition etc.?
Thanks for sharing what worked for you. - chager 8 years ago -
I'm just using the ones listed above, and not hte default ones. - dugullett 8 years ago
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I was having the same issue with my image time over a 10 gb switch being 4 hrs(on a regular switch it is 8-6 hrs) I tweaked my pre-install to reflect your settings and uploaded the post install task. This dropped the image down to 40 min it looked like the it was going well until it reached the post install task when I received an error. I copied and paste the scripts as written above. Any Assistance would be greatly appreciated. - mlarkin 8 years ago
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What is the error you're getting? I would stop the image on errors, and see if you can manually run the DISKPART script when it does error. It should tell you exactly what is going on. - dugullett 8 years ago
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I just took the post install task out and I’m going to try it again. - mlarkin 8 years ago
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If you're shrinking your partition to 30 GB make sure your post installs are not greater than that. Did you make this post install first in your list? - dugullett 8 years ago
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Actually after it error-ed on the first image I had a bad BCD and tried several methods to rebuild it without success, so I just ran an image that I knew worked, it error-ed out and said that that it did not apply the imaged but after it rebooted several times the image was there. Weird!! - mlarkin 8 years ago
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It was the only post install that I had. - mlarkin 8 years ago
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Sorry to necro an old thread but did you u use dells sysprep tool on the surface? I'm stuck with the windows upgrade error and none of the solutions I've found seem to work - terryj 7 years ago
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No, I built it out directly. Is your image working on other UEFI machines? - dugullett 7 years ago
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To be honest I only have 1 windows 10 image that is not UEFI and being deployed out to computers with no issue.
We just got a bunch of surfaces in so i've been trying to figure out how to image them and with the help of your other thread regarding vms and EFI i've managed to push out a basic w10 image via scripted deployment to a test surface with no issues.
The next step would be to do as you said and build on that image snapshot it then sysprep it and deploy it again to see if everything holds up okay. My only issue is that i've only ever sysprepped a machine with the dell tool so i'm unsure of what you mean when you say built it out directly.
if you have any advice on how to do it easily that would be great! also have you noticed any issues at all with imaging the surfaces?
Thanks - terryj 7 years ago -
I capture all of my images on VMs. I'm not familiar with the tool so I cannot really speak to that. I posted a link below that I did for Windows 8, but still works for Windows 10. I take my unattend.xml file and reference in a sysprep command line.
C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:C:\windows\system32\sysprep\Unattend.xml
http://www.itninja.com/blog/view/kace-imaging-capture-uefi-partions-vm-workstation - dugullett 7 years ago
Posted by:
xmod
8 years ago
I think you best bet will be to put the image on hard drives and apply them that way.
I am having trouble with this aswell. with Surface 3 / 4 & XPS models.
Posted by:
dugullett
8 years ago
I ran a DISKPART script to take this down to a 40 GB partition. It seems to be imaging faster. I'm still testing, but I'm thinking I should be able to run another DISKPART script as a "post install" task to extend it back out prior to Bitlocker encrypting.