System Management

Johan Arwidmark, Setup & Deployment MVP, just finished working on his Version 2.0 Deployment CD. It contains the following Step-by-step guides and Video Tutorials:

MDT 2010 Lite Touch Deployments (deployment without ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 R2, just the free tools)

• LTI01 – Installing the server for MDT 2010 Lite Touch
• LTI02 – Creating a Windows 7 reference image using Lite Touch
• LTI03 – Deploying a Windows 7 image using Lite Touch
• LTI04 – Dynamic Settings, creating and using the deployment database

MDT 2010 Zero Touch Deployments (deployment with ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 R2)

• ZTI01 – Installing the server for MDT 2010 Zero Touch and ConfigMgr 2007 SP2
• ZTI02 – Creating a Windows 7 reference image using ConfigMgr 2007 SP2
• ZTI03 – Deploying a Windows 7 image using ConfigMgr 2007 SP2
• ZTI04 – Dynamic Settings, creating and using the deployment database

Additional Presentations

• E01 – New features in MDT 2010
• E02 – Upgrading MDT 2008 to MDT 2010
• E03 – Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7

And guess what? He’s offering the CD for free to everybody who need and want it. You can register for a free download at www.deploymentcd.com.

Last month, after restoring the only ConfigMgr site and importing new reports, I saw that none of the reports I’m using have a link to another report.

To be sincere, this was a problem I didn’t know where to start troubleshooting. Thanks to guys from Microsoft’s ConfigMgr forum, who helped me identify the problem and recommended some troubleshooting steps.

So, the problem was due the fact that none of my reports had a link to another report. Don’t know how this happened… Anyway, to resolve this issue, I quickly installed a ConfigMgr site in a virtual machine and using Tom Watson’s advice, created a query that lists all reports with links to other reports. The query is something like this:

SELECT     TOP (100) PERCENT ReportID, Name, Category, DrillThroughReportID
FROM       dbo.v_Report
WHERE      (NOT (DrillThroughReportID IS NULL))
ORDER BY   ReportID

and the result looks like this:

DrillThroughReportID tells the ReportdID of the linked report. Basically, in a default configuration, I know the original ReportID and the linked ReportID.

Now, knowing these info, I’m manually creating the links in my production environment. This is a long process indeed, but I couldn’t find a way to automate this.

For the one who searched for these…

To create a collection with all Windows XP SP1 systems, use the query bellow:

select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.Caption like "%Windows XP%" and SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.CSDVersion = "Service Pack 1"

Similarly, to create a collection with all Windows XP SP2 systems, just change the Service Pack version number:

select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.Caption like "%Windows XP%" and SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.CSDVersion = "Service Pack 2"

And the same for all Windows XP SP3 systems:

select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM on SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.Caption like "%Windows XP%" and SMS_G_System_OPERATING_SYSTEM.CSDVersion = "Service Pack 3"

Our helpdesk asked me to make a task sequence that can be used on computers with more than one partition. In this case, I had to make sure that the operating system will install only on first partition and will not touch the data on other partitions.

To achieve this, I copied another TS and modified the following 2 steps:

• removed any “Format and Partition Disk” step
• in the “Apply Operating System Image” step, under “Select the location where you want to apply this operating system” made the following modifications:
  • Destination: Specific disk and partition
  • Disk: 0 (if all computers are installed on first hard disk)
  • Partition: 1 (if all computers have OS installed on first partition)
    

This way, when TS runs, it automatically wipes partition 1 from disk 0 and will not touch any other partition or disk.

Some time ago I used Admin Tools and RSAT for Vista and it saved my time from using remote desktop to log on to several servers. Now it is available (RTM, not RC or something…) for Windows 7 x86/x64.

Using RSAT for Win7, you can manage the following roles and features from Windows Server 2008 R2, 2008 and 2003:

After installing it, you can enable the roles and features you want to manage, by doing the following steps:

1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Programs.
2. In the Programs and Features area, click Turn Windows features on or off.
3. If you are prompted by User Account Control to enable the Windows Features dialog box to open, click Continue.
4. In the Windows Features dialog box, expand Remote Server Administration Tools.
5. Select the remote management tools that you want to install.
6. Click OK.

Now you’ll find the tools in Administrative Tools menu.
 

Want to know if your users store mp3 files on Desktop and My Documents folder?

1. Add .mp3 file type to Software Inventory Client Agent properties
   1. Navigate to Site Database – Site Management – Site Name – Site Settings – Client Agents and double click Software Inventory Client Agent
   2. Select Inventory Collection tab
   3. Click the new button and type *.mp3 as a file name.
   4. Set the location: All client hard disks or Variable or path name
      
   5. Click OK to close all open windows
2. (Optional) Wait for Software Inventory to run on all clients
3. Create a report using the following query:SELECT TOP (100) PERCENT SYS.Netbios_Name0, SF.FileName, SF.FileSize / 1024 AS [Size, KB], SF.FilePath FROM dbo.v_GS_SoftwareFile AS SF INNER JOIN dbo.v_R_System AS SYS ON SYS.ResourceID = SF.ResourceID WHERE (SF.FileName LIKE '%mp3') AND (SF.FilePath LIKE '%My Documents%') OR (SF.FileName LIKE '%mp3') AND (SF.FilePath LIKE '%Desktop%') ORDER BY SYS.Netbios_Name0

Receiving some complaints that users can’t find the Open, New etc. commands in the new Office 2007 interface, I had a task to customize Quick Access Toolbar so that all users can have these commands installed by default.

Office 2007 applications (Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word) use a Quick Access Toolbar setting file (.qat). Every application has its own .qat file (Access.qat, Excel,qat, Outlook.qat, PowerPoint.qat and Word.qat). In order to customize and deploy these files using Office Customization Tool, we must add a registry entry to enable roaming user profiles to access the .qat file during deployment. This is because, by default, qat files are not saved in a roaming location.

I did this using the OCT:

1. Open or create a new setup customization file (.msp) for Microsoft Office 2007.
2. Under Additional content, select Add registry entries and click Add.
3. Select HKEY_CURRENT_USER in the “Root” select box.
4. Select REG_DWORD in the “Data type” select box.
5. Enter Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Toolbars in the “Key” input box.
6. Enter QuickAccessToolbarRoaming as a “Value name”.
7. Enter 1 as a “Value data”.
   
8. Click OK.

After this, the default folder for .qat files will be: %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Office.

Now log in to any computer that has this modification and customize the Quick Access Toolbar for every Office 2007 application as you want. When you’re done, navigate to “%appdata%\Microsoft\Office” folder and copy all .qat files from there to a USB media for example.

Now you have two methods of distributing these files: copy these files to all computers manually/using a script or use OCT. It depends on your needs… I will use OCT to have these files copied during the installation of Office 2007.

To do this, open the same office customization file (.msp) as earlier and do the following modifications:

1. Under Additional content, select Add files and click Add.
2. In the Add Files to MSP File dialog box, open the folder that contains your *.qat files, select the Excel.qat file (for example) and then click Add.
3. In the File Destination Path dialog box, select the path [AppDataFolder]\Microsoft\Office for the “Destination path on the user’s computer”.
   
4. Click OK.

Next time when you will install Office 2007, Quick Access Toolbar in every application will have the commands you set. In my case, Excel’s Quick Access Toolbar looks like this:

When using task sequence, you might want to install different driver packages for different computer models. This can be accomplished by using a WMI query.

First of all you need to have driver packages for all your computer models and know the exact model name for every computer.

To find this, open a command prompt and type WMIC ComputerSystem GET Model (use this command on every computer to find it’s model).

Then, Edit your task sequence. Add how many steps you need with “Apply Driver Package”. Select the driver package you have created for a certain computer model (HP dc5700 in my case).

In the Options tab, click Add Condition and select Query WMI. In the WMI Query Properties window, make you sure you have root\cimv2 as WMI Namespace and write the following query in the WMI Query input box:

SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE Model LIKE “%dc5700%” for HP Compaq dc5700 computer models.

Now, for every driver package, replace the model name with the computer model name the driver package is for. This way, the task sequence will install the correct drivers on every computer that will match the model specified in the query and will skip other steps sending the following status message: “The task sequence execution engine skipped the action (HP Compaq dc5700) in the group (Apply driver packages) because the condition was evaluated to be false”.

Having to create a package with McAfee ePO agent, I wanted to make it available to task sequence too so it can be installed during the operating system setup. For this, I had to make it install unattended or silent not requiring any user input. As I have never worked with McAfee, first, I did not understand what the purpose of this agent is. I couldn’t understand why you should install the agent and not the antivirus software itself? When I did, I started to think how to deploy it easily and with no user interaction.

So, to do this, simply put FramePkg.exe into a folder, say “ePO”, and create a package as you normally would. Then create a program that has the following command line FramePkg.exe /install = agent /silent.

If you want to install ePO as part of one task sequence, make sure the program can run whether or not a user is logged on and do not allow users to interact with the program.

This way, after the computer is added to domain it will connect to the server and will receive all necessary settings (for example install antivirus software, patches and latest definition updates).

As Microsoft recently released Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 suite, it is a good idea to add the update files to the package so it it can be deploy during the installation.

So, first of all we have to download the SP2 executable file from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b444bf18-79ea-46c6-8a81-9db49b4ab6e5&displaylang=en (see additional information bellow).

Then, using a command prompt window, extract the content of the package to a folder you can browse to.

When the extraction is complete, you should have the following files:

At this point, you can delete the office2007sp2-kb953195-fullfile-en-us.exe file. Copy the other 9 files to “Updates” folder from your Office 2007 source folder.

Now you only have to update the distribution point/s and the next time Office 2007 will install, it will apply the SP2 update during Office 2007 installation.

Additional Info:

The same steps are valid for Visio and Project 2007.

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=78E36742-8BDA-471E-88E6-9B561BB06258&displaylang=en.
Microsoft Office Project 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c126fa4a-b43f-4f7e-a9d4-522e92a6cfee.