MDT 2013

As of today, the latest version of MDT is 2013. The actual version is 6.2.5019 as you can see. The main change it brings is support for Windows 8.1 (Windows Blue) but there are plenty of extra enhancements and tweaks.

Requirements

To install MDT on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 install or enable the following components on the computer on which you install MDT:

• Microsoft Management Console version 3.0
• Microsoft .NET Framework  3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
• Windows PowerShell™ version 2.0
• Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows 8.1 (Deployment Tools, Windows PE, and User State Migration Tool components)

To install on Windows 8, 8.1 or Server 2012 you only need the Windows ADK (for Windows 8.1). You also need .NET 4.0 and PowerShell 3.0 but both are pre-installed on those respective OSes.

Note: the compiled HTML help is not quite ready, so only cover up to 2012 Update 1. Microsoft will release this separately at some point.

Release Notes

I will leave you to read the release notes for yourself, but there are two issues I will highlight for deploying with ConfigMgr. Issue (1) is simply the OS ends up on the wrong volume.

BUG: Default OS image installed to D: drive

Importing the default OS image (install.wim) and deploying with a ZTI task sequence will cause Windows to install on the D: drive instead of the standard C: drive.

WORKAROUND: Set the OSDPreserveDriveLetter task sequence variable to a blank value instead of the default False.

Issue (2) is a bug in the UDIWizard.wsf that breaks language setting. So, you can put the correct settings in the customsettings.INI file and it will happily ignore it.

BUG: The time and currency language format is not configured

The time and currency language format is not configured properly on a target computer, even though the correct language you selected in the Time and currency format (Locale) list on the Language UDI Wizard page. This issue can be caused by an error in the UDIWizard.wsf file. The UDIWizard.wsf file is in the mdt_files\Scripts folder (where mdt_files is the folder that is the source for the MDT files package that the task sequence uses).

WORKAROUND: To correct the error in the UDIWizard.wsf file, perform the following steps:

1. Edit the UDIWizard.wsf file, which resides in the mdt_files\Scripts folder (where mdt_files is the folder that is the source for the MDT files package that the task sequence uses).
2. Remove the following line from the UDIWizard.wsf file:

oEnvironment.Item(“UserLocale”) = oEnvironment.Item(“InputLocale”)

Note   The text listed above is one line in the UDIWizard.wsf file. Any line wrapping is owing to formatting.

1. Save the UDIWizard.wsf file.
2. Update the distribution points with the modified version of the MDT files package that contains the updated UDIWizard.wsf file.