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Hbear
Contributor
Contributor

Mapped drive not accessible in Administrator command prompt

Hello all,

I'm somewhat of a newbie with VMware Workstation 8

I have created a VM with Windows 7 Professional x64, added updates and some applications with the intention of copying the image to a Win 2008 R2 server for deployment to multiple computers over the LAN.

I got everything working like I wanted within the VM, then uninstalled the VMWare tools from the VM, and ran Sysprep

From within Workstation 8, I mapped drive V: to point to the virtual disk.

It is accessible from Windows Explorer, and it is also readable from a normal command prompt (DIR, COPY, etc).

However...I am trying to run Imagex /Capture to create a .wim file that can be installed to a physical machine using WinPE.

THE PROBLEM:

Imagex requires that Command Prompt be opened as Administrator.

...but, when opening Command Prompt as administrator, the mapped drive is not accessible.

for instance: DIR V: gives me "The system cannot find the path specified"

Any ideas why a normal command prompt can see the mapped drive but administor command prompt can't?

Is there a better way to create the .wim file?

(Note that I have to install to a physical machine before final capture for deployment because one app, Respondus Lockdown Browser, will not install within a VM)

Thanks in advance...

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4 Replies
DefToneR
Contributor
Contributor

Hello there!

Like I see on this forum (and I do too) a lot of people do complicated things to do a simplest ones.

I dont know why to make an virtual machine to then deploy on physical. In this cases most technicians take an physical PC, install everything there, run the sysprep, and then make the image with ghost, or cobian or other standad software for it.

Ghost got this application to mount and server of images and then you can deploy it with a simple bootdisk from network.

But if you like to do it this way, you can use this software http://www.vizioncore.com/products/vConverter/ or the vmware convert too http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/. All are paided app.

I know there is and forencisc app that mount vmware images to "physical" disks.

I guess that you can boot with winpe or ghost ON the virtual machine and do the image of the hardisk inside it, creating a second disk and saving the image file there and then extracting it by coping.

Hope this help you.

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ZebS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

A simpler way to accomplish what you're after might be to cook up a WinPE disk, mount it in Workstation and then boot your VM to it and capture an image that way.

I actually found this thread because I'm having an unrelated problem with Lockdown Browser (trying to create a Thinapp) of it. You can get around the message about running it on a virtual machine if you contact their technical support and obtain a code that can be used to disable that function.

Hbear
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks, ZebS,

That's actually what I ended up doing.  

Thanks for the tip on LockdownBrowser... I'll contact them for the magic potion that will let me install it next time I create a new reference image.

(I ended up deploying to a physical machine, installing Lockdown Browser, then doing another Sysprep & Capture... a lousy work-around, but I was under a time crunch to get things out to the student lab).

In response to DefTonR.. there are a lot of good reasons to build the reference image within VMWare (or other virtualization tool)... In particular, Snapshots! If I've installed something that I later realize didn't go well, it's easy to go back in time....I can also easily fork at a particular point for unique student vs. faculty images.

-Also, we have at least 5 distinctly different hardware configurations in our department student computer lab... The easiest way to deploy to this environment over the network (for us at least) has been to use Sysprep and some form of Microsoft's deployment tools (we use SCCM). Some other campus labs are using Ghost or FOG... and have been maintaining seperate images for each hardware combination (Accckkk!)

(and according to FOG's own documentation, using Sysprep with FOG is "guaranteed to cause headaches.")

HBear

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amit_talkin
Contributor
Contributor

Okey this is old topic but this issue still persist in all VMware versions ( up to ver.11.x so far ).

Solution is, Run VMWare Workstation as Administrator, then map the drive. Now you will be able to see drive in command prompt, but won't be able to see it in explorer.

Anyways, this helps to capture the image atleast.

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