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Manage Windows images with the Windows ADK

Tools at Hand

Article from ADMIN 82/2024

By Tam Hanna

The Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit is a universal verification and management suite for deployments, with tools for analyzing system performance and simplifying the deployment of Windows images.

Microsoft has been using the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) as a drop-off point for various useful tools and developments for some time now. Unfortunately, the matching documentation is distributed across the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and the official documentation is incomplete. The collection of links [1] can be useful because it points you to relevant documents and tutorials for the respective components.

For the work in this article, I used a workstation with Windows 11 23H2; before proceeding, you should know that the ADK tools need substantial computing power. Microsoft last updated these tools in September 2023. The new features are not the main focus here, but I will point them out for more experienced ADK admins.

Installing Windows ADK

Microsoft's deployment SDK is very closely tied to the base version of the operating system running on your host. In other words, it is very much advisable to complete the Windows Update process before rolling out ADK, because outdated components will always provoke erratic behavior in the various ADK tools. The deployment is made more difficult by the proliferation of different versions.

For this article, I implement what follows with "ADK for Windows 11, version 22H2," but you should select the correct options on the ADK download page [2] for your situation. In general, Microsoft recommends you use the ADK that matches the latest version of Windows available in your environment. In a heterogeneous infrastructure, the ADK that matches the Windows version you use is the logical choice.

After pressing the button to confirm the download, the adksetup.exe file is dropped onto your disk; running it launches an installation wizard (Figure

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