Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Tutorial: Create Your Own Windows Template Using VirtualBox
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Tutorial: Create Your Own Windows Template Using VirtualBox

BlazeMuisBlazeMuis Member
edited January 2017 in Tutorials

Hi!



In this tutorial I will go through all the steps to make your own Windows template for use on your OVH, Kimsufi, SoYouStart, Online.net or Hetzner server (more are probably supported, but these are the ones it's confirmed working on).



Make sure to have the following things ready:


  • Windows ISO
  • Ubuntu ISO
  • VirtualBox (Which can be downloaded for free on the VirtualBox.org website).
  • A storage Server/VPS




    Need help? Send me a PM!

First step is to create a new Virtual Machine.

I'm using Windows 10 for this tutorial, but any Windows ISO will work.

Click on Next and give the VM 2048MB RAM (1GB should work fine as well, but 2GB is recommended).

Follow the screenshots below, 20GB is enough space for the Windows install.

Click on Create and go to the settings of the VM.

You will see the same screen as the screenshot below, go to Storage and click on the disk image. Click the litte disk right next to the "Optical Drive | SATA Port 1" and select your Windows .iso.

Click OK and start the VM, install Windows to your liking and add the RDP protocol to the Windows Firewall. Make sure to enable RDP as well, this all can be done by following the screenshots below.

Go to Control Panel --> System and Security --> System and click on Remote settings.

Select the Allow remote connections to this computer and click Apply.

Now go to Control Panel --> System and Security --> Windows Firewall and click on Allow an app or featured through Windows Firewall. Click on Change settings, scroll down till you see Remote Desktop in the list, click the checkbox and check Private as well.

If you have a server from which the drivers are not supported by Windows by default you can add them using pnputil. Open up CMD (As Admin) and type the following in the commandprompt: pnputil -a C:\DriverFiles\driver.inf.



You can download drivers from the Intel, Realtek etc websites, unpack them and find the correct driver.inf for your version of Windows. If it's not working out for you, then please contact me with the driver details, Windows version and the hardware you're trying to install the driver for.



Now shutdown the VM and make it boot from the Ubuntu ISO which you can download from the Ubuntu website.

Go to the VM settings and replace the Windows 10 ISO with the Ubuntu ISO. Go to System and uncheck the Hard Disk checkbox and have Optical Drive checked as the only one, this will make sure that the server will boot from the Ubuntu ISO without it booting Windows from the HDD.

Boot the VM and click on Try Ubuntu.

Open the terminal, which can be found by clicking the upper left Ubuntu logo and searching for Terminal.

Make yourself the root user by typing sudo -i in the terminal and create a temporary directory by typing mkdir /tmp/template.


Install SSHFS with apt-get install sshfs and mount your storage VPS with the following command: sudo sshfs root@ServerIP:/directory/to/store/template /tmp/template.


Once that's all done, make a copy of the disk where windows is installed on using DD. In VirtualBox the disk is usually named /dev/sda, this can be checked by typing fdisk -l in the terminal. We're going to use the following command to make a copy to the disk and upload it to our storage Server/VPS.

dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -1 | dd of=/tmp/template/WindowsTemplate.gz

This will take some time, it all depends on the speed of your internet, your computer and your server.


Once done, you can install your own template on your server using one of my tutorials and by replacing the link to my templates with yours.

Thank you for reading this tutorial, and remember, if you have a question just contact me!

Original Source: https://blazemuis.nl/tutorial-create-your-own-windows-template-using-virtualbox/

«1

Comments

  • Great tutorial, thanks!

    Thanked by 2BlazeMuis GCat
  • I normally add Intel Network adapter drivers (ProWin64.exe) to my templates. I have discovered that some online and kimsufi servers do not work without them.

    Thanked by 1BlazeMuis
  • BlazeMuisBlazeMuis Member
    edited January 2017

    @myhken said:
    I normally add Intel Network adapter drivers (ProWin64.exe) to my templates. I have discovered that some online and kimsufi servers do not work without them.

    Yep, that's correct. Drivers can be added using pnputil :)

    Edit: All the templates I've made contain a lot of drivers from both Intel and Realtek.

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • @BlazeMuis: nice tutorial. How do you find out which drivers are neccessary for servers? Trial and error method seems a little tough with uploading few GBs every time.

  • @Cdoe said:
    @BlazeMuis: nice tutorial. How do you find out which drivers are neccessary for servers? Trial and error method seems a little tough with uploading few GBs every time.

    If you want to be sure, you can lspci in rescue mode and find out the ethernet card. Then download those drivers and install them :)

    Thanked by 1Cdoe
  • @BlazeMuis: awesome. Thanks! :-)

    Thanked by 1BlazeMuis
  • dont launch sysprep ?

  • @raikkosl said:
    dont launch sysprep ?

    Not needed. It's on my templates though.

  • @BlazeMuis maybe edit your guide to include that you have to use Ubuntu 14.04 to get sshfs installed? It will not work on the 16.xx .iso files. Or do you use 16.xx?

  • @myhken said:
    @BlazeMuis maybe edit your guide to include that you have to use Ubuntu 14.04 to get sshfs installed? It will not work on the 16.xx .iso files. Or do you use 16.xx?

    Works fine on 16.04? Works fine for me lol.

  • BlazeMuis said: Works fine on 16.04? Works fine for me lol.

    Never got it to work on my Hetzner server that I use for templates. Downloaded the Ubuntu .iso several times, but never works. Strange

  • Awesome Joodle. I'd take a crack at it but i'm so busy atm. Have you ever thought of using windows 7 light as a template? That would mean you could get it on a vps that only has 10gbs of ssd

  • @jacno said:
    Awesome Joodle. I'd take a crack at it but i'm so busy atm. Have you ever thought of using windows 7 light as a template? That would mean you could get it on a vps that only has 10gbs of ssd

    Have fun enabling RDP on that ;)

    Thanked by 1jacno
  • jacnojacno Member
    edited January 2017

    @BlazeMuis said:

    @jacno said:
    Awesome Joodle. I'd take a crack at it but i'm so busy atm. Have you ever thought of using windows 7 light as a template? That would mean you could get it on a vps that only has 10gbs of ssd

    Have fun enabling RDP on that ;)>

    Thanks lol, saved me alot of time. Anyway to get a windows iso on a 10gb ssd then? or am i just going to have to order a higher gb vps?

  • @jacno said:

    @BlazeMuis said:

    @jacno said:
    Awesome Joodle. I'd take a crack at it but i'm so busy atm. Have you ever thought of using windows 7 light as a template? That would mean you could get it on a vps that only has 10gbs of ssd

    Have fun enabling RDP on that ;)>

    Thanks lol, saved me alot of time. Anyway to get a windows iso on a 10gb ssd then? or am i just going to have to order a higher gb vps?

    Would recommend at least 30GB. Windows will use a lot of disk space in the end.

    Thanked by 1jacno
  • Did this a while ago with a xpenology install. If anyone is interested on how to do it with xpenology, maybe I do a tutorial on that.

  • @BlazeMuis said:
    Now go to Control Panel --> System and Security --> Windows Firewall and click on Allow an app or featured through Windows Firewall. Click on Change settings, scroll down till you see Remote Desktop in the list, click the checkbox and check Private as well.

    You meant check Public. Had to rebuild ISO because of that (and mine overlook :-P).

  • @Cdoe said:

    @BlazeMuis said:
    Now go to Control Panel --> System and Security --> Windows Firewall and click on Allow an app or featured through Windows Firewall. Click on Change settings, scroll down till you see Remote Desktop in the list, click the checkbox and check Private as well.

    You meant check Public. Had to rebuild ISO because of that (and mine overlook :-P).

    Ermm.. No, Public will get selected by default, at least that's what it did in my case.

  • @BlazeMuis then "tick both". Because on WS2012 R2 I had checked Private and Public was unchecked by default ;-)

  • @Cdoe said:
    @BlazeMuis then "tick both". Because on WS2012 R2 I had checked Private and Public was unchecked by default ;-)

    Take a look at the screenshot.. They're both ticked.

  • @BlazeMuis said:
    Take a look at the screenshot.. They're both ticked.

    I know, but "check Private as well." could be misleading, as at some cases Private is already checked. Nevermind.

  • Anyone got a backup of the tutorial ? The initial screenshots are missing... thanks!

  • why is this guy banned ?

  • @yokowasis said:
    why is this guy banned ?

    Scamming

  • @lion said:

    @yokowasis said:
    why is this guy banned ?

    Scamming

    Stole about 2k under the guise of emergency from various LET users

  • WHTWHT Member

    @maldovia said:

    @lion said:

    @yokowasis said:
    why is this guy banned ?

    Scamming

    Stole about 2k under the guise of emergency from various LET users

    He is not banned, just masked @BlaZe

  • @WHT said:
    He is not banned, just masked @BlaZe

    No that isn't him

  • WSSWSS Member

    @WHT said:

    @maldovia said:

    @lion said:

    @yokowasis said:
    why is this guy banned ?

    Scamming

    Stole about 2k under the guise of emergency from various LET users

    He is not banned, just masked @BlaZe

    Look. Look at how dumb you are.

  • @WHT said:

    @maldovia said:

    @lion said:

    @yokowasis said:
    why is this guy banned ?

    Scamming

    Stole about 2k under the guise of emergency from various LET users

    He is not banned, just masked @BlaZe

    Fake news.

  • WHTWHT Member

    @teamacc said:

    @WHT said:

    @maldovia said:

    @lion said:

    @yokowasis said:
    why is this guy banned ?

    Scamming

    Stole about 2k under the guise of emergency from various LET users

    He is not banned, just masked @BlaZe

    Fake news.

    Ok, its just an alternative fact.

Sign In or Register to comment.