Since Vista’s release Microsoft has provided a variety of tools for deploying their operating systems. One such tool is Business Deployment Desktop which Microsoft describes as ” the best-practice set of comprehensive guidance and tools from Microsoft to optimally deploy Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system.” Though BDD certainly makes OS and application deployment to a variety of hardware platforms simpler than ghosting, eventually you’ll run into a problem: some critical hardware may not be natively supported by WinPE, the preinstallation environment used to load the OS onto a new system. This article will explain how to inject LAN drivers into WinPE, allowing you to deploy installations to a larger variety of hardware.

In a previous post I talked about the importance of keeping your software current by installing patches and updates. Microsoft, in an effort to make this process as painless as possible, has made updating an integrated part of their operating systems. This article will explain how to turn on automatic updating in Windows XP and Vista and discuss best practices about it’s configuration.