I am using the following software versions to deploy a Windows 7 SP1 x64 Lite-Touch Installation to a test machine that I am running:
Windows Server Version: Windows Server 2012 Enterprise 64-bit
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Version: 2013
Windows ADK Version: 8.1
I ran a default Task Sequence deployment and had no issues with the process and everything deployed fine.
However, I now wish to customize this installation and include the Windows updates that were released after SP1. From my understanding I can accomplish this task three ways. The first is to let the system go out and get the updates but I tried this process and the deployment time is around 2 hours. The second way to is to add the packages into the task sequence and the the third is to inject them into the wim.
I have imported a small group of updates into the packages folder. Next I verified that the apply patch option in the preinstall phase was enabled and the selection was set to all packages. The problem I run into is that none of the updates seemed to apply. I then attempted it again by disabling the apply patch option and placing the task for install updates offline in the post-install phase and when that didn’t work I also created a custom task in the state restore phase. No updates applied in any of these attempts.
From what I can tell (but am uncertain) the updates were not being applied since the unattended.xml did not have the packages listed there. I tried adding the packages to the unattended file and on my next attempt using each of the phases I receive a dism.exe error.
My question is as follows:
If I wish to add updates directly to the wim file or if I want to add them into the task sequence for deployment (I would like to complete things both ways for comparison) how should I go about accomplishing this task?