Adding Support for a Headless System to your Configuration

Before you can deploy a run-time image to a headless device, you must add support for headless devices in your configuration.

To add support for a headless system

In Target Designer, open your configuration.
Add one of the following components to your configuration.

Headless VGA Driver

-or-

Terminal Services Core

To build a system that boots with no VGA card, you must include one of these components, but not both.

If you add the Terminal Services component to your configuration, it will considerably increase the size of your run-time image footprint.
Add the VGA Boot Driver Component to your configuration. The VGA Boot Driver component, Bootvid.dll, is required by NTLDR regardless of whether a VGA card is present in your configuration.

To see this component, you must set the visibility threshold in Target Designer to 200 or less.
Check dependencies and build your run-time image.

If a video card is present and you want to use an attached display, the VGA Save Driver Component is required. It is not required for a headless system with no graphics adapter. However, a dependency check error occurs if you do not include it in your configuration. You can disregard this error. To see this component, you must set the visibility threshold in Target Designer to 200 or less.

Additional resources