Thankfully (or not, depending on how you like looking at log files) ConfigMgr 2007 logs everything. Unfortunately, when in WinPE mode for OSD, reading those log files can be a real pain in the behind. Trace32 (and the relatively recent Trace64 for our 64 bit counterparts) were never included in WinPE boot media, which is a tad odd considering the requirement for it.

Fear not, as it is totally possible to integrate Trace into your own boot image. I tend to do this whenever I’m working on a customer OSD engagement as it makes my life, and more importantly, the customers life much easier. No more trawling through Notepad .log files people – upgrade your boot images now!

The first thing you should do is ensure you have MDT 2010 Update 1 integrated into your ConfigMgr environment. Follow this guide if you haven’t already done this. It’s painless procedure and only adds enhancements to the platform which you choose to include if you wish.

Before you start, I’ll be explaining below how to create a new enhanced boot image for both x86 and x64 platforms. I choose to do this as opposed to integrate Trace into the standard boot images just in case something goes wrong – I would hate to interfere with a boot image that was currently being used to deploy an OS. This method allows you to test the new image and swap out the old one as and when you need to.

First off, grab the Trace32 and Trace64 applications from here.

Next up, you need to stage them on a network share, which is the area we will specify when compiling a new boot image. It’s a good idea to place them into a .\Windows\System32 folder, as this is where we want the apps to end up on the boot image so we can execute them from the command line just by typing the name (without the path).

In my example, I have created the following folders and placed the Trace apps into the relevant architecture folder. Notice I’ve also renamed each app to just Trace, so that I do not need to remember whether to run Trace32 or Trace64 depending on what boot image I’ve booted into. Of course, this is just personal preference, but it’s two less characters to type.

• \\server\OSD\Boot\BootImageCustomisations\Files\x86\Windows\System32\Trace.exe (Renamed from Trace32.exe)
• \\server\OSD\Boot\BootImageCustomisations\Files\x64\Windows\System32\Trace.exe (Renamed from Trace64.exe)

Now we have our content staged, lets go ahead and create two new boot images; one x86 and one x64. Expand Operating System Deployment in the ConfigMgr Console and right click Boot Images. Click Create Boot Image Using Microsoft Deployment.

On the Package Source screen, enter the UNC path to the folder in which you want to create the boot image. This is only really a staging area, as clients will grab the source from the Distribution Point when running a deployment. As you can see, I created a source folder for x86 and x64 respectively. Click Next.

You can fill in General Settings as you please, though it pays to add a little detail. Click Next.

On the Image Settings screen, select your acrhitecture. I’m generating a new image for both x86 and x64, but right now, this example is building a x64 boot image. In the Extra Directory to add text box, enter the UNC path to the root of the folder we created earlier containing the Windows folder. Click Next.

On the Summary screen, verify all your settings are as you wish and click Next. The wizard will now generate a new boot image using the settings you defined.

If all goes to plan, you should end up with a successful confirmation screen. Click Finish. Your boot image is now created.

Remember, before you add it to a Task Sequence to boot from, ensure you add it to relevant Distribution Points and enable F8 command prompt support, just like you would any other boot image.

Lather, rinse, repeat for x86, and you have yourselves an enhanced boot image with a proper log viewer for all your ConfigMgr debugging needs! Go ahead, boot your Task Sequence, run up your command prompt and type trace. Magic.

The process to integrate MDT is extremely straight forward and takes two minutes – but the advantages it brings to Operating System Deployment are huge! Some of my favourites are:

• The ability to use a whole bunch of new variables in a Task Sequence. For instance, I can target laptop systems simply by using the IsLaptop variable. Equally, I can also use IsDesktop or IsServer. No more WMI querying for Chasis Type or battery presence. Hoorah.
• Better control over server roles for Server 2008 and 2008 R2. A neat feature if you deploy server operating systems through ConfigMgr.

So what are you waiting for, let’s get to it.

Download MDT 2010 Update 1 for your architecture from here.

Run the installation and work your way through the wizard, which is a simple next, next, next installation in most cases. Once installed, click Start > All Programs >Microsoft Deployment Toolkit > Configure ConfigMgr Integration.

In the Options screen, ensure you enter your Site server name and the Site Code for that site. Notice you can also remove integration from this point at a later stage if you so wish. Click Next.

At the Confirmation screen, you should receive a successful message. Click Finish.

I’m not usually one for ‘I told you so’ but, I told you so! It really is that simple. If you wish, you can jump into the ConfigMgr console and verify the integration by right clicking on the Boot Images node and verifying the new option as shown below.

Delving into the distmgr.log file didn’t shed too much light on the issue, but there was an interesting error code in there which you should look out for.

Win32 Error = 5

After a little poking around in some event logs on the Distribution Point server (running Win2008 R2 SP1) I noticed the McAfee Antivirus Engine reporting some strange errors. Funnily enough, it was blocking access to one of the files included in the package, Autorun.INF.

Once I disabled the AV protection and removed and re-added the package to the DP, it installed as expected.

This issue had me running in circles for an hour or two. Initially, I had thought it must be WebDAV extension filtering blocking access to the .VBS files within the package, but after tweaking the settings, I ended up looking elsewhere. That is when I spotted the AV event log errors!

Lesson learned: Always disable AV on a DP. Alternatively, try and exclude the DP folder from protection if AV is a must have.

I’m in the process of creating a demo environment for SCCM 2007 R3 in a local VMware Workstation environment. Everything was working fine and dandy until I came to deploy a Windows 7 x86 image to a bare metal VM.

The Task Sequence would initialise and the Partition and Format step would work, but as soon as it went to move on to the next step, I’d receive the error 0×80004005 with a 15 minute countdown to restart.

Eventually, I narrowed down the issue. I basically discovered that the VM was originally a Windows XP VM, therefore no x64 extensions were installed. Seeing as I was booting to a x64 boto image, I figured this could be the cause. Low and behold, changing the properties of the Task Sequence to use the x86 boot image solved the issue! The machine now builds.

So all those hours of throwing in different versions of drivers were wasted, It really was that easy…

This has been puzzling me for some time, and during my research, I noticed that despite the ConfigMgr Software Update app indicating these updates are required, they are actually already installed on the machines.

The software updates causing this headache are:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2 Update for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB976569)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 Security Update for Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB979909)

It seems that despite actually being already installed, Windows Update still tries to install the update, thus causing a failure as shown in the screenshot above. It’s also worth noting that other updates I approved after these two, successully install, so this isn’t an issue with the Windows Update agent. The SCCM log files also indicated that the updates install without error.

After much head scratching, I found I could resolve this issue by doing the following.

1. Bring up a command prompt and run the following to stop the Windows Update agent.

   NET STOP wuauserv

2. Delete the following folder, including its contents.

   C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution

3. Reboot the computer.

Now the next time the Windows Update agent runs, it will see that the updates are already installed and present you with the status of ‘Installed’ instead of failed.

There are two ways to achieve this in a Windows environment. Firstly, you can configure a Group Policy to do just that. Secondly, you can rename the account as part of your Operating System Deployment. The latter is what I’m interested in.

You can achieve this by adding a new step into your OSD Task Sequence. I place this at the very end of my Task Sequence to ensure it gets applied after any administrator related tasks. The computer is then set to reboot afterewards to ensure it is applied successfully.

Add a Run Command Line step into your Task Sequence and add the following code to the Command Line text box.

wmic UserAccount where Name="Administrator" call Rename Name="NewName"

Change “NewName” to whatever you want the administrator account to be renamed to and save the Task Sequence. Your local administrator account will now be renamed accordingly as part of your Operating System Deployment. I haven’t tried myself, but I’d imagine you could run this step as part of your build and capture Task Sequence. In theory, this should eliminate the need to add the step to each of your OSD Task Sequences.

What you’ll need:

• Microsoft SyncToy 2.1
• A Windows XP or higher computer

Grab yourself a copy of SyncToy and get it installed. Once you’ve installed, you can launch the application from your All Programs menu. Upon first use, you’ll be asked to create your first folder pair. Before you do, there are a couple of options to consider.

Synchronisation can be performed in a number of ways, each with different effects. Below is a description for each method.

Syncronize

Files in the left and right folders are mirrored. This ensures files remain syncronised even if you edit the file on your remote storate. Deletions will also be mirrored.

Echo

Files in the left folder will update to the right only. Assuming you set your right folder to the remote storage, changes in the remote storage will not be copeid to your left folder. Deletions on the left will delete to the right.

Contribute

Files created and modified on the left will copy to the right. Deletions will not effect the right folder.

Once you’ve picked your chosen sync method, go ahead and specify your left and right folders. In my case, I set the left folder as my local data storage, and the right folder as my remote storage. Click Next and you’ll be asked for your sync method. Select your chosen method and click Finish. Your folder pair is now created.

There are a few other options to consider, such as file exclusions, but I’ll leave that to your discretion.

Now the good part. It’s all very well having folder pairs, but as it stands, we can only sync manually by clicking the Run button. With a little bit of scripting and Group Policy modification, we can set SyncToy to sync all folder pairs on log off. Very handy.

Open your local Group Policy Editor (Start > Run > gpedit.msc) and browse the tree to User Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts.

Double click on Logoff and you will be presented with the Logoff Properties window. Create the following script somewhere on your local machine.

CD "%ProgramFiles%\SyncToy 2.1\"
SyncToyCmd.exe -R

Now in the Logoff Properties, add the script you just created by clicking the Add button and browsing to the file. The script should now appear in the Logoff Properties window. Click OK to accept this and close the Group Policy Editor.

The script should now execute on logoff. Test it out by creating some local files and logging off. Windows should say Running Logoff Scripts for a little longer that usual. This is a good indication that it is running. Log back on a voilà. Your files should magically have copied up to your remote storage.

Not the most elegant of solutions, but it works, and its free. No complaints from me.

Things you’ll need:

• The Adobe Reader 9.4.0 distributable package.
• Some disk space.
• The Adobe Reader Customisation Wizard 9.
• SCCM environment. (Although you can use this method for Group Policy Software Installation too).

Go ahead and grab your Adobe Reader 9.4.0 installation EXE. The first thing we’ll need to do with this is extract the MSI installation from within it. This is a pretty straight forward task that can be achieved with the following command:

<path to>\AdbeRdr940_en_US.exe -nos_o"Reader940" -nos_ne

The -nos_o switch is the folder name to extract the files to. This will form your AIP (Administration Installation Point) and is what we will customise using the Adobe Customisation Wizard. The Adobe Reader 9.4.0 – Setup screen will extract the MSI into your specified folder (as shown below). The screen will disappear once extraction is complete.

Once extracted, you will have your new AIP. It should look similar to my one below.

Now it’s time to customise your AIP. This is done using the Adobe Custmoisation Wizard. Install the application from the link provided above and you’ll find a new icon in Start > All Programs. Run it and select File > Open Package. Browse to the AIP you just created and select AcroRead.msi. You’ll then be presented with various categories down the left and options on the right. This is where the magic happens.

At this point you can go through the categories on the left and customise at your leisure. To get you started, here are a few common items you may wish to customise.

• Run Installation: Silently
• Suppress Reboot
• Suppress display of End User License Agreement (EULA)
• Hide Document Message bar
• Disable all updates
• Disable Help > Digital Editions
• Disable Product Improvement Program
• Disable all Acrobat.Com access, including initiation and participation

Once you have finished your customisations, select Transform > Generate Transform.

Save your transform to the AIP. You can now close the Adobe Customisation Wizard. Be sure to click No when prompted to save the package. We don’t want anything written to the original MSI. That completely goes against the idea of transform files.

Congratulations, you now have a customised Adobe Reader 9.4.0 installation which is ready for deployment.

Depending on your chosen deployment method, you can now create your SCCM package or Group Policy object using the files within your AIP. If you are using GPO deployment, you can use the AcroRead.msi file. Be sure to add the transform file in the Modifications tab so that the MSI file takes in your customisations.

If like me you have the benefit of SCCM in your environment, you’ll want to configure your package with a Program command line such as this:

msiexec.exe /i "AcroRead.msi" TRANSFORMS="<path to transform>" RebootYesNo="No" Reboot="ReallySuppress" /qb

One thing to remember, with 9.4.0 being a major release, the installation will remove previous versions of Reader by default, so you don’t have to worry about running my removal script as previously blogged. Bonus. You’re now ready to deploy. Good luck!

It seems there is a bug when creating a transform when setting the Allow PDF files to open in Browser option. If you set this option to enabled, once the software is deployed and you try to open a PDF within a web browser window, the following error is displayed:

The Adobe Acrobat/Reader that is running can not be used to view PDF files in a web browser. Adobe Acrobat/Reader version 8 or 9 is required."

I’m still unsure as to the exact cause of this issue, but trawling the web seems to indicate that this is indeed a result of a bug within the Customisation Tool. My workaround was to set the option to Disable and regenerate the transform. This allows you to open a PDF from a web browser but forces the PDF to open within an Adobe Reader window, as opposed to inline within your web browser.

Thanks Adobe.

After running a few successful deployments, I started to notice PXE boots were failing. The PXE server seemed to be ignoring client boot requests as if they were ‘Known’ to SCCM. This was the case even after deleting the resource from the SCCM database. This behaviour was validated by looking into the SMSPXE.LOG file on the PXE server. I noticed the following lines were present.

No Boot Action for Device (17898) found
ProcessDatabaseReply: No Advertisement found in Db for device

I began to investigate the PXE server configuration and noticed that after deleting the resource from the SCCM database and restarting the Windows Deployment Services service, the computer was correctly identified by PXE boot as an Unknown Computer and successfully booted into the Task Sequencer.

It seems to be the PXE server cache is causing the resource ID to remain in memory so it is no longer discovered as an Unknown Computer. Luckily, I discoverd a fix that seems to work for me. The PXE server cache timeout is determined by the following registry key. In my case, it was set to 0, which I assume is infinite. I ammeded this value to 300 (decimal) and restarted the Windows Deployment Services service on the PXE server and all seems to work as expected. I can image a bare metal computer, delete it from the SCCM database and after approximately two minutes, I can PXE boot it as an Unknown Computer again to reimage it.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS\PXE\CacheExpire

Be warned though, I believe this is set for a reason. I’d imagine that if you are using a mandatory advertisement to the Unknown Computers collection, the machine will re-PXE boot each time the OS deployment tries to reboot as part of the OSD Task Sequence. Though this hasn’t been tested and isn’t a problem for me as I am using optional advertisements.