Client Side Setup: Sysprep Client Machine

Once you have finished installing all updates/software and configuring any settings you want to have on each image, you will need to strip out all of the unique information from that install so that you can image multiple machines with the same image and not have issues with duplicate names and System IDs on the network. To do this we will use a tool included in Windows 7 called Sysprep.

Sysprep is located by default at:

C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe

There are many options that go along with sysprep, this will be discussed in a later guide. For deployment purposes, all we need to know now is how to get our windows 7 machine ready to image.

To do this go to “Start –> All Programs –> Accessories” Right click on “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as administrator”

If you have User Account Control enabled, click YES to the dialog box that pops up.

The following options are available to us for Sysprep

For this example we are just going to use the following:

“Sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown”

This will strip information from the machine and shut down the computer. Once the machine is turned back on you will get the “Out of Box Experience” as if the machine had just had Windows 7 Installed.

To run this command we just type it in the command prompt and hit enter. It will bring a window up and shut down when it is finished.

**Note**
Do no turn the machine back on until you are ready to capture an image. If you do you will have to re-sysprep the machine, this can only be done 3 times!!

Plug-ins for Windows Live Writer

 

I just installed a bunch of neat plugins for Live Writer. This is just a post to test them.

 

Windows Deployment Services

Currently I am working on getting an all inclusive guide for Windows Deployment Services. There are a lot of guides online, however, none address the whole process of deploying custom images to client machines.

Look for a complete guide and video walk through soon!

Word documents opening slowly over a network share

Well, yesterday I ran into an issue where I was unable to open word documents from a network share that had just recently been moved from one server to another.

The problem was that when the server was opening up the word document on the new server it was still looking for the old server to open a template by a unc path.

In the bottom left hand corner of word you could see that it was trying to access \\oldserver\sharename\templates\template.dot.

I looked all over for a fix to this but could not find anything short of running a bunch of scripts on all the files and folders in the new share.

WORKAROUND:
Since it was still looking for \\oldserver and that server was decommissioned, all I did was add an (A) record to DNS to point oldserver to the newserver ip address.

Granted, this is a super messy way of getting it to work. However, I also had 80+ people sitting at their desks with nothing to do. I will have to research this a little more and see if I can find a way to fix this for good!

New Blog Updater

Just testing my new blogger client.

Dell Vostro hackintosh

Well, I just got my new Dell Vostro A90. I'm running Ubuntu on it right now, but I plan on installing OSX on the machine. I will keep you up to date on the status of my new Dell Hackintosh.

Symantec AV 10.1 install problems

Just ran across this one today and thought I would share my findings.

When trying to install the Symantec AV client to a 32bit workstation running Windows XP sp3 (or any service pack), Symantec systems center tells you everything pushed out fine, however the client never has the AV agent installed.
The following event logged in eventvwr on the client machine after trying to push the install out from the server:


Event Type: Information
Event Source: MsiInstaller
Event Category: None
Event ID: 11708
Date: 11/24/2008
Time: 8:44:46 AM
User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer:
Description:
Product: Symantec AntiVirus Win64 -- Installation failed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 7b 32 34 33 46 41 45 30 {243FAE0
0008: 37 2d 43 32 30 44 2d 34 7-C20D-4
0010: 36 45 30 2d 39 41 45 37 6E0-9AE7
0018: 2d 36 46 45 45 35 45 31 -6FEE5E1
0020: 45 44 41 41 34 7d EDAA4}



Now, the strange thing is is that the installation of Windows on this machine is only 32bit. However, the CPU in the computer is a 64bit. The reason for Symantec, and other applications, erroring out on the install is because it sees a key in the registry that tells it to send the 64bit install. To fix the problem, you need to delete the registry key from:

HKLM\Software\Wow6432node

Just right click and delete the whole thing.

Now try the push install again. You can watch the system log to make sure that the live update service is installed and shortly after you should see symantec barking at you because of old virus defs.