So as usual when it concerns Specops Deploy/OS it was a request from a customer that got me started. The customer wanted .NET 3 installed in their reference image. But that feature is no longer copied to the winsxs folder, but instead only lives on the DVD or on Windows Update. So how do we do this, DISM my world? MDT has a pretty way of doing this, we just needed to make sure we could use this in Deploy / OS.

Special needs

So how do I know if I need access to the SXS of the install media to add the feature, or if I can skip that step. Only DisabledWithPayloadRemoved require access to the installation media. The the following powershell and it will tell you:

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online|Where-Object {$_.featurename -eq 'netfx3'}

Well as I said before we need access to the SXS folder so lets copy the folder.

  1. Create a share on the deployment server, lets call it OS-Files
  2. If you run a multi-site environment you might want to make it available using DFS-N.
  3. Create a folder for the OS media. I called mine Windows 8.1 Enterprise x64
  4. Copy the \Sources\SXS into a subfolder of the folder we just created

Explorer showing the directory \specops01\OS-files\Windows_8.1_Enterprise_x64\sxs

Modify the Deploy / OS GPO

So we need to enter into the deployment GPO what we want to happen. We currently need to enter 3 properties to make this work. So lets add them and continue.

  • SkipRoles=YES
  • OSFeatures=NetFX3
  • WindowsSource=<Path to SXS share> (for me it is, C:\OS-files\Windows_8.1_Enterprise_x64\sxs)
    Showing the custom properties required to add a feature that does not exist in the image.

Add a step to the task sequence

  1. Open Deployment Workbench from the start menu
  2. Open the deployment share located at \Deploy\DeploymentRepository dont check the box for upgrade
  3. Go to Task Sequences
  4. Right click the install task sequence and select properties
  5. Select tatoo
  6. Click Add->Roles->Install Roles and features
  7. Click Options tab
  8. Add->If Statement->If All Conditions are True
  9. Add->Task Sequence variable
  10. Enter OSFeature and let exists continue to be selected

Do the installation

If you look close during the installation you just might happen to see the feature being installed.

Happy building a better reference image.