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

During “troubleshooting period”, I have found a very nice website with error codes’ descriptions. Now, every time I get an error in any program, I check the list from this blog http://blogs.msdn.com/joshpoley/pages/errors-009-facility-sspi.aspx.

This is how the table with error codes looks like:

The last row shows an error I got the day before yesterday and reading this description helped me understand the problem I was having.

Thought it might help you sometimes…

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.