Wiping and Imaging Computers

This series of youtube videos show how to create a Wiping and Imaging environment that can refresh and re-install Windows 11 and Linux and collect data from each system processed such as serial number, memory and disk size, processor model, OS installed etc. It uses technologies such as DHCP, tftp , Samba File Servers, Web Servers, WinPE, PXE, Grub, pxelinux, iPXE, Django, HyperV, bootable from USB and the network. Windows 11 images are created in hyperV and updated with the latest security patches with any and all programs that the organization uses, and are prepared for installation using DISM

1. Wipe disks using the hardware secure erase functions, (part of the SATA disk functions), to secure erase a disk using hdparm (Part 15)
2. Create a Linux image to boot into Pre-Execution Environment using chroot (Part 18, 19n and 25), add a script to manage hdparm and erase a disk (Parts 16, 17 and 26)
3. Erase eMMC and NVME disks using SATA commands (Parts 45 and 46)
4. Write a Splash screen after erasure, so when a disk boots it dispays a message such as "Erased on dd/mm/yy using xxx" (Part 21)
5. Create reference Windows 10/11 images on hyper-V, capture and deploy them (Part 31, 33 and 36), deploy to USBs (Part 39)
6. Extract a boot.wim file for WinPE from the Recovery Environment (Part 52), add drivers (Part 4 and 5), add Wifi (Part 7), modify startnet (Part 38), add Powershell (Part 53)
7. Setup a workshop Network Boot system (ISC dhcp, tftp, nginx, samba) to network boot into Windows Pre-Execution Environment (Parts 22, 23 and 28)
8. Setup a portable Network Boot system with Proxy DHCP using DNSMASQ - usable on the office LAN (Part 23-bis ant 23-tre)
9. Setup the boot server to provide routing of an internet service for the install environment Windows Update and Drivers (Part 29)
10. Create USBs with M/S Diskpart to boot into PXE Win PE. (Part 6)
11. Create USBs with grub and PXELinux to boot into PXE (Part 8 and 40), Ventoy (Part 41)
12. Boot WinPE using Grub (Part 6, 24 and 40)
13. Enhance Grub with themes (Part 10) and secure boot (Part 11)
14. Boot WinPE in UEFI with iPXE (Part 27)
15. Boot PXE / WinPE in Legacy mode with PXELinux (Part 37)
16. Use Network Share (Samba) to install reference images (Part 28)
17. Check if a disk has been wiped or encrypted by reading track 0 (Part 42, 43 and 44))
18. Send wiped / imaged data to a inventory management system (Part 48, 49, 50 and 51)

All the files that are used and described in the videos are available in github: github.com

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Part1 Overview and Capture of a Master Windows 10 Image using DISM

Part2 Install Master Image and Add Drivers

Part3 Install Drivers

Part4 Add Drivers to WinPE

Part5 Add Drivers to WinPE boot.wim using DISM

Part6 Create a bootable USB with Diskpart to install M/S Windows

Part7 Connect to a Share from WinPE with Ethernet cable and wifi

Part8 Grub bootable USB (BIOS and UEFI)

Part9 Grub bootable USB, add WinPE to menu for BIOS and UEFI modes

Part10 Grub bootable USB, add themes

Part11 Secure Boot with Grub and Microsoft USBs

Part12 Making a disk unreadable, Encryption is the best solution

Part13 WinPE checking if the computer's disks are encrypted

Part14 Imaging encrypted disks

Part15 Wiping with hdparm on Linux

Part16 Wiping using a bash script with hdparm

Part17 Wiping using an enhanced bash script using whiptail dialogs

Part18 Create a Linux PXE bootable image using debootstrap and chroot

Part19 Configure chroot to run wipe scripts and boot from the USB

Part20 Modifying a bootable .ISO file using xorriso

Part21 Update Wipe script, writing a Splash Screen to an erased disk

Part22 Setup a dhcp network boot server - dhcp configuration

Part23 Setup a tftp network boot server - tftp configuration

Part23-bis Setup a bootp server using DNSMASQ with proxy DHCP

Part24 Legacy/BIOS and UEFI network booting Grub

Part25 Create a network bootable Linux PXE image to run wipe scripts

Part26 Using http to Speed up booting in Grub by 4X

Part27 Booting WinPE in UEFI with iPXE

Part28 Install Windows in PXE from a Samba Share

Part29 Configure Routing for Linux Server to provide internet services

Part30 Booting WinPE in Legacy BIOS with iPXE

Part31 hyper-V Reference Images. Create PXE bootable VM in hyper-V

Part32Reference Images. Create linux based boot server with DHCP and TFTP for HyperV Clients

Part33 Create Virtual Machines as Reference machines, capture wim file with DISM from vhdx file

Part34 Sanitizing the System after Imaging - post install script

Part35 Weirdness and Gotchas

Part36 Deploy new image to the Server without disturbing the installs currently in progress. This is done by having 2 versions of the image, Live and Test.

Part37 Legacy/BIOS Booting Network with PXELinux

Part38 Modifying startnet.cmd in boot.wim

Part39 Deploy New Image to USBs

Part40 Two ways to boot USB to WinPE with Grub

Part41 Boot USB to WinPE with Ventoy

Part42 Checking that disk is wiped or encrypted

Part43 Deploying C++ to Winpe and testing DiskRead

Part44 Checking in WinPE that disks are wiped / erased prior to Imaging

Part45 Wiping / Erasing eMMC disks with Wipe Script

Part46 Wiping / Erasing NVME disks with Wipe Script

Part47 Using iSCSI as a High Speed Shared Data Source

Part48 Using Django to log wiping and imaging events. Setup in Windows

Part49 Sending Imaging Events to Django from Windows using Powershell

Part50 Using Django to log Wiping and Imaging Events. Setup in Linux

Part49 Sending Imaging Events to Django from Windows using Powershell

Part51 Sending Wiping Events to Django from Linux using Bash

Part52 Using Windows Recovery winRE to boot to a command prompt in Windows Pre-execution Environment

Part53 Adding Powershell to winRE