System Management

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.

I just spent half an hour trying to understand why my task sequence cannot find the files on a distribution point; although the TS runs normally, I see all available TSs and I can choose the one I need. Then I found why: I missed something I never missed before and that must not be forgotten! I forgot to configure the network access account .

So, if you receive the following error: “This task sequence cannot be run because the program files for <your package here> are inaccessible on the distribution point.”

you should check if your network access account are configured and the information is correct.

To resolve this issue, you must correctly configure the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 client network access account. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Use an account that has administrative permissions to log on to a computer that has the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Administrator Console installed.
2. Click Start, click All Programs, click Systems Management Server, and then click SMS Administrator Console.
3. Expand ServerName, expand Site Management, expand SiteName, and then expand Site Settings.
4. Click Client Agents, right-click Computer Client Agent, and then click Properties.
5. In the Computer Client Agent Properties dialog box, next to the network access account that you want to configure, click Set.
6. In the Windows User Account dialog box, enter the user name and the password that you want to use for the network access account, and then click OK two times.

Here is Microsoft’s article about this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935914

In case you have PXE Boot working normally but suddenly it is not working anymore, it may be because of the WDS service. This might sound strange but sometimes Windows Deployment Services (WDS) Server does not start after restarting the server, even if it is set to automatically start. It happened to me a few times….

Starting the service fixed the problem (in my case) every time. I didn’t tried, but maybe configuring delayed start for this service will fix the problem in the future.

Yesterday, on SCCM TechNet forum, somebody asked me more info about “Format and Partition Disk” and “Apply Operating System Image” tasks in a task sequence. As the answer requires some screenshots to be provided, I decided to write a post here with that details and direct that user to this post.

Format and Partition Disk:

In SCCM console navigate to Computer Management, Operating System Deployment, Task Sequences. Suppose you already created or imported a new Microsoft Deployment Task Sequence. If not, do it now.

• Select the desired Task Sequence and click Edit in the Actions pane
• In the <Name> Task Sequence Editor window, in the left pane select Format and Partition Disk

• Click the yellow star to add a new partition
• In the Partition name type the name of your system partition, this will be you disk C:
• Under Partition options, select the Partition type as Primary
• Choose how you want to set partition size, use a percentage of all hard disk drive or a fixed value. I use 50% of the HDD size, because not every time I know what HDD size new laptops/PCs will have but for sure it will be more than 80GB
• Check the box to make this partition bootable
• Under Formatting options, choose the file system you want and check the Quick format checkbox (optional) to save time during installation
• Under Advanced options write a Variable name
• Click OK when you’re done making your changes

Now you’ll see this volume in the task sequence editor.

To add another partition click the yellow star again and fill in the following details:

• In the Partition name type the name of your partition, this will be you disk D:
• Under Partition options, select the Partition type as Primary
• To use all the remaining disk space, select “Use a percentage of remaining free space” and set the Size(%) to 100
• Under Formatting options, choose the file system you want and check the Quick format checkbox (optional)
• Under Advanced options write a Variable name
• Click OK when you’re done making your changes

Now you’ll see both volumes in your task sequence editor window. Next time you will deploy an operating system, the hard disk will format and create 2 partitions (C: and D:) and your computer will boot from the first partition (C:).

How does SCCM know that it needs to apply the OS image on the first partition and not the second? Well, it doesn’t, we will set this up in the “Apply Operating System Image” task.

Apply Operating System Image:

In SCCM console navigate to Computer Management, Operating System Deployment, Task Sequences.

• Select the desired Task Sequence and click Edit in the Actions pane
• In the <Name> Task Sequence Editor window, in the left pane select Apply Operating System Image
• If you are installing the OS using the source media, then choose “Apply operating system from an original installation source” option using Browse choose one of the installation packages you have created when making the task sequence
• If you have captured and OS image previously as a .wim file, you can select “Apply operating system from a captured image” option and select the image you want

          - To apply the image on a specific partition, under Destination select “Specific disk and partition”. Under Disk select 0 (zero) and under Partition select 1 (first partition). This is the option I use every time
          - To apply the image on the C: partition, under Destination select “Specific logical drive letter”. Under Disk letter select C:

This is it about these two tasks. Of course these tasks can be further customized using the Option tab of each task.

Here is another error related to Task Sequence and MDT 2008. After creating and advertising a task sequence, most probably you will run it . Make sure you have the latest version of your packages on the distribution point, otherwise you will receive an error while running the task sequence. This will be something like “Task Sequence: your task sequence name has failed with the error code (0×80091007). For more information, please contact you system administrator or helpdesk operator.”

In the log file you will find this: “The hash value is not correct.”

What you can do to resolve this? Two  things:

1. to update your distribution point with the latest version of the packages. To be sure the package was updated successfully, you can put a txt file somewhere and verify if it is on the DP.
2. modify the advertisement to not download the files locally but access the files directly from the DP.

Today I came across an interesting problem in SCMM while deploying creating a Windows Vista image of reference computer. And again, SCCM 2007 displays the error with not much intuitive help.

I’m using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit integrated 2008 with SCCM 2007 when I need to deploy an operating system. At the end of the imported Task Sequence, after the wizards creates the .wim image, it copies the image to a share specified by me. During this step I received the following error: “Error while importing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Task Sequence. Details: The ConfigMgr Provider reported an error”.

Checking smsprov.log I have found the error code – 5. Yes, 5 . From the log file: “Failed to make a copy of the source WIM file due to error 5”. Nice… what could I say? Shortly, error 5 is about permissions.

I started to play with share permission. Granted read permission to admin account I was using and to the sccm computer account but I had no success. Granted full control permissions to these accounts. Same error .

Well, the problem was because SCCM is accessing local shares using NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM account and not computer account (the shared folder was on the same computer). I granted full control permissions to SYSTEM account and next time I imported the task sequence to create an image of the reference computer, it was ok and the image was copied to my shared folder.