MDT issue to capture reference OS

Question

Dear friends,

We are deploying windows 10 education OS into our machines but we had an issue that - I installed a new OS via MDT, the OS was downloaded from volume license center, then I customized the OS by removing office software, unpin excel, word, teams, onenote, etc from start menu, then I added some optional features, this is the final state that I would like to have as a reference image OS.

I went ahead to use MDT litetouch vbs script to run the Capture and Sysprep task sequence, it ran as expected. After it was done, I tried to install a new OS by using this custom captured image .wim. However, I found that the icons were back, office was not uninstalled, just like the default win10 education, what steps have I been missing? The annoying thing was that, the optional features I added into the reference image, they were there in the new machine as expected, but I expected the default office should have been gone with the excel, word, etc icons.

Any ideas would be really helpful! Thanks a lot for reading this.

Answer 1

So you created this image via a Virtual Machine, with the default OS as the operating system?
Then you modified the OS on the VM to remove Office, unpin icons, etc.....?
Then you took a snapshot of this state of the VM? And then Captured it with Sysprep & Capture? Once done, you apply the prior state of the VM back to before it was sysprepped.
This should create a deployable WIM with all the changes you made.
One thing you can do in the unattend is set Copy Profile to True. This will make the admin desktop the default desktop for all users who sign on.

The point is, it's best to start with a VM (such as in Hyper-V) and create your base image this way, then modify it, capture/sysprep it, then apply the prior state back.
The make a deploy task using that captured WIM file.
Please be more specific as to how you're creating your base image and then modifying it.