System Management

Yesterday I started to play with Hyper-V and SCVMM 2008. I added two hosts and also imported one virtual hard disk (with Windows Server 2003 SP2) to see if a .vhd created by Virtual Server 2005 SP1 works well in Hyper-V.

I noticed that I do not have an internet connection, actually there wasn’t any network adapters installed although I’m sure I had one. I installed Integration Services and it installed Microsoft Virtual Machine Bus Network Adapter. Ok, good. Looks like it doesn’t have the IP address set up. When I tried to configure the adapter, the following error occurred: “The IP address <ip address> you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter…”

As I did not have any network adapter prior to installing Integration Services, I opened Device Manager and checked Show hidden devices from the View menu. The result: no Intel 21140-Based… adapter there. Nothing wrong here, this is by design. Installed devices that are not connected to the computer (i.e. USB device) are not displayed in Device Manager, even with Show hidden devices enabled.

So, in order to uninstall the old network adapter (Intel 21140-Based… in my case) do the following:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
2. At a command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:
   • set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
3. Type the following command a command prompt, and then press ENTER:
   • start devmgmt.msc
4. Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager.NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Manager before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
5. When you finish troubleshooting, close Device Manager.
6. Type exit at the command prompt.Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.

There is a KB article about this. Although the article applies to Windows XP only, the solution worked very well on Windows Server 2003.

Suppose you have created a task sequence, advertised it and booted from task sequence media or however you want; if you receive the following error: “Task Sequence: <TS name> has failed with the error code (0×80004005). For more information, please contact your system administrator or helpdesk operator.” at Setup Windows and ConfigMgr step you might want to check the Product Key! Most probably the key is not correct, so either write another one or remove the product key at all from Apply Windows Settings step in your task sequence and you will have to provide it during the install phase.

I left the product key blank and next time I booted the PC from the TS media, at the Setup Windows and ConfigMgr step I was asked to provide a product key. I entered my Business edition product key and everything was ok.

Few months  ago I had an interesting problem at a client site that took me a while to resolve. So I want to post it here, maybe it will help others…

After a successful upgrade from SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007 SP1, I configured software update point, synchronized with Microsoft update to get the list of updates for products I needed and created a new list with updates required by clients. When I tried to deploy software updates it should download the updates to my SCCM server. Well, this step failed. PatchDownloader.log reported the following:
Trying to connect to the root\SMS namespace on the XYZ-SCCM machine
Connected to \\XYZ-SCCM\root\SMS
Trying to connect to the \\XYZ-SCCM\root\sms\site_XYZ namespace on the machine
Connected to \\XYZ-SCCM\root\sms\site_XYZ
Download destination = \\XYZ-SCCM\WsusContent\08123a3c-c7fd-43a4-a4ce-80089b1267df.1\WindowsXP-KB938828-x86-ENU.exe
Contentsource = http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3-19990518/cabpool/windowsxp-kb938828-x86-enu_ba3f0cbe4ba5736d4254732e41fe058697b76ebc.exe
Downloading content for ContentID = 8170, FileName = WindowsXP-KB938828-x86-ENU.exe
Try username DOMAIN\USERNAME from the registry
Proxy enabled proxy server ISAserver:8080
HttpSendRequest failed 12007
Download http://www.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3-19990518/cabpool/windowsxp-kb938828-x86-enu_ba3f0cbe4ba5736d4254732e41fe058697b76ebc.exe to C:\DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1.LAB\LOCALS~1\Temp\2\CAB3B.tmp returns 12007
ERROR: DownloadContentFiles() failed with hr=0x80072ee7


First I thought it was a stupid error, as I set (and checked twice) all correct information. Looks like proxy information was old and not updating with what I have set later in SCCM. So I needed to remove old information and set the new ones again.

I have checked the registry and I couldn’t do much as username and password was encrypted. Well, I used upddwnldcfg.exe (from <ConfigMgrInstallationFolder>\bin\i386\00000409 folder on a x86 machine) to delete all proxy information stored in the registry and added the new username, password and server’s IP address. After this, downloading updates worked perfectly. More information about configuring proxy settings using upddwnldcfg.exe, you can find here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892795.aspx

A few days ago I had to make an image with Windows XP SP3 with all needed applications for lite touch installation.

Everything went well and I was happy until I entered the mini-setup phase on the first computer with that image applied on it. I received an error regarding the product key. I guess I tried a dozen of product keys but none of them worked. After reading the message again and more careful, I realized that the problem was with my Windows XP media – it was not a VL media. And I realized this because the message said to look for a product key on the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) sticker and not my License Agreement…

Resolution

Got another media with Windows XP SP3 VL and made a repair. During the repair phase, I provided the VL product key and it worked. Next time I entered the mini-setup, I filled in some info and that was it.