{"id":3694,"date":"2026-01-19T18:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2026-01-19T18:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T18:02:12","slug":"microsoft-deployment-toolkit-is-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/?p=3694","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Is No More!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">End of an era, MDT is no more: <a href=\"https:\/\/oofhours.com\/2026\/01\/18\/a-complete-history-of-mdt-abridged\/\">https:\/\/oofhours.com\/2026\/01\/18\/a-complete-history-of-mdt-abridged\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have a few stories myself regarding Windows OS deployment over my career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I started disk imaging using Norton Ghost back in the late-90s where I used it on my home computer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Fast forward to November 2002 where the hospital I worked at was using MS-DOS boot disks with Norton Ghost to deploy Windows 98\/98SE, then eventually Windows 2000. We had specific boot disks for specific models with specific NICs. I changed all that using <a href=\"https:\/\/leinss.com\/files\/Adam%20Leinss%27%20Tech%20Tips.pdf\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/leinss.com\/files\/Adam%20Leinss%27%20Tech%20Tips.pdf\">Bart&#8217;s network boot disk from nu2.nu<\/a>. It&#8217;s the blog entry from August 5, 2005, over 20 years ago!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Eventually we switched that over to burned CDs and then to bootable USB flash drives, however, at the time, very few computers booted from USB devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On to my next employer where again it was Norton Ghost and specific MS-DOS boot disks for specific models. I changed that over to a custom WinPE solution where you would boot up to a MS-DOS menu to wipe the disk with mbrwiz, partition the disk with a batch file script that ran diskpart commands and then GImageX to apply the WIM image. It worked brillantly for deploying Windows XP and Vista to bare metal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Windows 7 came out in 2009, I switched over to using MDT and Johan Arwidmark&#8217;s &#8220;Total Control&#8221; methodology for injecting drivers at boot time and it worked beautifully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I last touched MDT in 2017 when I left my employer, but I still talked to the staff that worked there and MDT was still very much in use after I left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Michael Niehaus is coming out with a free\/community version of <a href=\"https:\/\/2pintsoftware.com\/products\/deployr\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/2pintsoftware.com\/products\/deployr\">DeployR<\/a> in 2026 that is supposed to replace the functionality of MDT and I am very excited to see that when it is released!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Soli Deo Gloria<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>End of an era, MDT is no more: https:\/\/oofhours.com\/2026\/01\/18\/a-complete-history-of-mdt-abridged\/. I have a few stories myself regarding Windows OS deployment over my career. I started disk imaging using Norton Ghost back in the late-90s where I used it on my home computer. Fast forward to November 2002 where the hospital I worked at was using MS-DOS &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/?p=3694\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Is No More!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-operating-system"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7wiG8-XA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3694"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3702,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3694\/revisions\/3702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leinss.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}