Creating a Windows 8.1 Base Virtual Machine

Transcription

1 Creating a Windows 8.1 Base Virtual Machine When we have to build Servers for many different scenarios, it sure is helpful to have a base Windows OS Image handy to start with. Even though it seems simple, I thought I would share my personal experience and How To steps to help those who are still somewhat new to this process. I happen to use Hyper-V for all of my virtualization stuff so my instructions will be based on this. The first thing I take into consideration is the versions of Windows Operating Systems that I plan on using during my testing, learning and demos. Based on the different scenarios that I tend to evaluate, I happen to need the following: Windows 7 Base Image Virtual Machine Windows 8.1 Base Image Virtual Machine Windows 2012 R2 Base Image Virtual Machine Since the process of building the image is pretty much the same for all above operating systems, you will not need to follow all the examples. Here are my How To Steps: 1- On your computer, open Hyper-V Manager 2- In Hyper-V Manager, in the actions pane, click New and then click Virtual Machine 3- In the New Virtual Machine Wizard, on the Before You Begin page, click Next

2 4- On the Specify Name and Location page, in the Name field, type en_base_windows_8.1, and then click Next 5- On the Specify Generation page, click Generation 2, and then click Next.

3 6- On the Assign Memory page, in the Startup Memory field, type 1024, select the Use Dynamic Memory for this virtual machine check box, and then click Next.

4 7- On the configure Networking Page select your internet connection, and then click next

5 8- On the connect Virtual Hard disk page, on the Specify Name and Location, in the Name field, type en_base_windows_8.1.vhdx, confirm that the Location field is set to YOUR LOCATION, and then click Next.

6 9- On the installation options page, select install an operation system from a bootable image file, click browse to your ISO files location

7 10- On the Completing the Virtual Machine Wizard page, click Finish. Virtual machine named en_base_windows_8.1 is created.

8 11- On your computer, in Hyper-V Manager, right-click the en_base_windows_8.1 virtual machine, and then click Settings. 12- Click Memory. In the details pane, confirm that Enable Dynamic Memory is selected, and in the startup RAM field, type 1024, in the minimum RAM field type 1024 and in the maximum ram field accept your default configuration.

9 13- Click Processor. You can modify the number of virtual processors based on the number of processors on your physical computer. In my case 8

10 14- Start the VM and press any key to start the installation boot

11 15- On the Which type of installation do you want? Page, select custom

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13 16- In the type a computer name field, type base

14 17- On the Express Settings page, select use express settings

15 18- Create a local account

16 19- In the username field, type User. In the Type a password Field, type P@ssw0rd. All the passwords in these guides will be Pa$$w0rd

17 20- Well done! Now we have the windows 8.1 ready! 21- Open a windows Explorer console and create a new folder c:\temp. We will use this folder to save different files that we will use in this lab.

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19 22- Go to Sysinternals website and download PStools suite. Save the files on C:\Temp

20 23- Unzip the files and Copy all the files to C:\windows\system32

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22 24- Run a Command Prompt as an Admin and execute psgetsid and accept the license agreement

23 25- Now you can see your Computer`s SID, copy the SID. This number has to be unique for each computer

24 26- Create a new notepad file and save in C:\temp. Rename the file with your SID number

25 27- Open windows firewall window and Turn Off windows firewalls in all your networking locations

26 28- Open the computer management console, expand system tools, expand local users and groups and Delete the local User account that we created before

27 29- Now it`s time to use SYSPREP Windows operating system installations include many unique elements per installation that need to be "generalized" before capturing and deploying a disk image to multiple computers. Sysprep seeks to solve these issues by allowing for the generation of new computer names, unique SIDs, and custom driver cache databases during the Sysprep process 30- Go to C:\windows\system32\sysprep and Execute Sysprep 31- Select Generalize and Shutdown.

28 32- When the sysprep process has finished. Open the Hyper-V Manager console and delete the virtual machine. We only need the Virtual Hard disk.

29 33- Go to the location of your base hard disk and configure as Read-Only 34- Now we have a new Windows 8.1 Base virtual Machine that we will use in the next Step by Steps Guides.