June 2011 - Posts
In order to support the new 4k advanced format drives, we need to apply a hotfix to WinPE 3.0.
First, download the hotfix (KB982018) here.
Once you have downloaded the hotfix and extracted the files, you should have 2 files. (One for each platform)
In your Deployment Workbench, create a new folder under the “Packages” node called “Windows 7”.
Import the hotfixes into this folder.
Add this folder to your Selection Profiles for WinPE. (It is highly recommend that you use a Selection Profile for driver injection for WinPE). Modify both your x86 and x64 Selection Profiles.
Ensure your boot images are configured to use the appropriate Selection Profile.
Update your Deployment Share to incorporate the hotfix into your boot images.
Enjoy your WinPE 3.0 Advanced Format ready boot images!
Read the original post here.
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Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP
Any large sector disks, such as Advanced Format disks, are not supported by Microsoft for installation on systems that are running Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, or Windows XP.
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Over the next few years, the data storage industry will be transitioning the physical format of hard disk drives from 512-byte sectors to 4,096-byte sectors (also known as 4K sectors). This transition is driven by several factors, including increases in storage density and reliability. This transition causes incompatibility issues with existing software (operating systems and applications).
This article describes the current Microsoft support policy for these new drive types on Windows operating systems. Applications and hardware devices may have reliability and performance issues when they are connected to these new types of drives. Contact your application and hardware vendors about their support policies for these new drive types.
There are three drive types that we will discuss here. Because Microsoft support policy differs for each, verify the drive type that you have installed before you read farther.
Specific requirements for Microsoft support by operating system version
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Any large sector disks, such as Advanced Format disks, are not supported by Microsoft for installation on systems that are running Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, or Windows XP.
Application support requirements for large sector drives
In addition to Windows operating system support, administrators and users should make sure that their applications support these large sector drives. Scenarios and issues to be aware of include performance, reliability, backup, and recovery. Support statements for some Microsoft applications and products are listed here:
Known compatibility issues
The following are known compatibility issues that may occur when you use large sector drives:
- If you are using a logical sector drive of a size other than 512 bytes, Windows system image backup and restore operations may fail with the following error message
One of the backup files could not be created.
Details: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
Error code: 0x8078002A - If you create a virtual hard disk (VHD) on a native 4K sector drive by using Disk Management or Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2, the operation fails with an "Incorrect Function" error.
- In Disk Management, the following error occurs:
Virtual Disk Manager Incorrect function
- In Hyper-V, the following error message is generated when the New Virtual Hard Disk Wizard is used:
The server encountered an error trying to create the virtual hard disk. The system failed to create ‘I:\Disk0.vhd.’ Error Code: Incorrect function.
- In Hyper-V, the following error message is generated when the New Virtual Machine Wizard is used:
The server encountered an error while configuring hard disk on TestVM. The system failed to create 'I:\TestVM\TestVM.vhd.' Error Code: Incorrect function.
If for some reason you don’t want to use Group Policy to disable the Windows 7 Action Center, then there is a registry key you can set to disable it.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\POLICIES\EXPLORER
HIDESCAHEALTH=DWORD:00000001
Once the registry key is set to a value of “1”, certain items will be greyed out in the Action Center configuration, and you will no longer see the Action Center icon in the system tray.
There is a simple Group Policy setting for this as well, this is generally my preference, but I had a client who wanted to disable it in the image regardless.
User Configuration – Policies – Admin Templates – Start Menu and TaskBar – Remove the Action Center Icon
Download here.
Brief Description
The Visio 2010 add-in for System Center provides a comprehensive list of alerts from System Center Operations Manager 2007 and system information, user group information and patch information from System Center Configuration Manager 2007.
Overview
The Visio 2010 add-in for System Center provides a comprehensive list of alerts from System Center Operations Manager 2007 and system information, user group information & patch information from System Center Configuration Manager 2007 in a single consolidated view. This add-in has a client and a server component. The client component requires Visio professional 2010 or Visio Premium 2010 and the server component requires SharePoint Server 2010. The server side component makes it possible to publish the data linked diagram to SharePoint Server 2010 and refresh it in real-time for broader consumption.
System Requirements
- Supported Operating Systems:Windows 7;Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 editions;Windows Server 2008 R2;Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2;Windows Vista Service Pack 1
.NET Framework 3.5Microsoft Visio 2010 Professional or Premium
Instructions
1. Download the file by clicking the Download link (above) and saving the file to your hard drive.
2. Follow the instructions in the Visio 2010 Add-in for System Center-User Guide to install the add-in.
Fellow MVP Kent Agerlund has a great post with a nice download for installing and configuring SCUP 2011.
Read his original post here.
The latest version of System Center Custom Updates Publisher 2011 is released and ready for download. SCUP 2011 is a freeware tool from Microsoft that can assist you in authoring and publishing 3rd. party updates to Configuration Manager and System Center Essentials.
To get you started you can download the complete SCUP 2011 installation and configuration guide here I hope the guide can save you a few hours of work and get you up and running with SCUP today.
In my guide I have references to two files used to deploy the needed certificates. Those are:
Certutil.exe and certadm.dll, both files are part of the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack.
Happy “Scuping”
Great post over on The Deployment Guys by Daniel Oxley.
Read the full post here.
This post was contributed by Daniel Oxley, a Senior Consultant with Microsoft Services UK
Often the simplest tips are the best ones, so here is one I have been using pretty much ever since I started working with MDT.
When working as part of a team in the same MDT environment, you can often run into issues when various people are modifying the task sequence, or debugging a process that is part of it. My own method to mitigate this issue is to fork the "official" task sequence, creating my own one, in order to separately realise testing or to simply try something out, before feeding changes back into the main task sequence.
The downside to this method is that, by forking the task sequence, the new forked one also appears in the list of task sequences and thus allows somebody to accidentally run it, possibly causing undesired results to their computer (such as formatting it!). Therefore, in order to prevent this situation, I always introduce some simple validation tasks into the task sequence, typically right at the start. These validation steps perform a simple query to check if a computer is "authorised" to run the task sequence or not. My authorisation method is usually based on the MAC address of the computer, but it really can be any value that you like.
The best thing about this tip is it's simplicity. As you can see in the screenshot below, it only consists of two tasks (the Gather task is actually only required if you have not already run a previous Gather task), and a Run Command Line task. You'll notice that the command line is incorrect. This is intentional and not an error, and if MDT attempts to run this command line it will fail the task sequence execution.
Here are the steps I use to implement this:
- Create a new Task Sequence Group called "Authorised Computer Verification".
- Add a Gather task (if necessary).
- Add a Run Command Line task, with a command line like the one shown above.
- On this same task, switch to the "Options" Tab. On this screen you can add your own personalised conditions, or use the same MAC address conditions that I have used, as shown below.
Notice that the condition is actually a negative. Consequently, when a computer runs the task sequence, this task will only execute if the MAC address of the computer does not match one that is in the list. And because the command line of the task is erroneous, MDT will fail at this point, thus preventing the unknown, or unauthorised, computer from continuing.
When working with MDT and Configuration Manager, you could restrict use of a task sequence by only advertising it to a collection built using direct membership. However, there might be situations where you can't or don't want to use this collection method. This tip works equally well in a ZTI environment if you wish to use it that way, however you might need to add an additional "Use Toolkit Package" task before the Gather step.
Finally, there are other methods to achieve the same result, such as using the CustomSettings.ini file; the reason I do it this way is because its implementation is so quick and simple.
Great Group Policy Preferences post over on the Ask the Directory Services Team Blog.
Read the full post here.
Hello again AskDS readers, Mike here again. This post reflects on Group Policy Preference targeting items, specifically targeting by security groups. Targeting preference items by security groups is a bad idea. There is a better way that most environments can accomplish the same result, at a fraction of the cost.
Read the original post here.
Scenario 1
- You have a Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) site server.
- You install hotfix 2213600 on the site server.
- You use the Import New Driver Wizard to import a set of drivers on to the site server. You specify a category and a driver package in the wizard.
- You import the same set of drivers again. You specify a different category and a different driver package in the wizard.
In this scenario, the original category is incorrectly overwritten on each driver, and only the second specified category is set on each driver.
Scenario 2
- You have a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 site server.
- You install hotfix 2213600 on the site server.
- You have a folder under the Drivers on the site server.
- You use the Import New Driver Wizard to import a set of drivers to the folder on the site server. You specify a driver package in the wizard.
- You import the same set of drivers to the folder again. You specify a different driver package in the wizard.
In this scenario, the wizard does not import the set of drivers to the second driver package.
Michael Niehaus has a new post on ConfigMgr Driver Management.
Read the original post here.
After MMS 2010, I had posted a series of blog postings talking about different mechanisms for managing drivers with ConfigMgr 2007. You can read through that at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2010/04/29/configmgr-2007-driver-management-the-novel-part-1.aspx.
Then a hotfix was released that changed the way ConfigMgr 2007 handled duplicate drivers when importing. I talked about that in the post at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2010/10/15/configmgr-driver-management-a-new-development.aspx. One point called out in that posting: driver categories would be overwritten when a duplicate driver was imported specifying a different category. That made the “Added Predictability” model described in the first posting very difficult to implement (without using something like the PowerShell script I posted in the first series).
Now, there is a new development: Another hotfix that affects driver importing:
Category is incorrectly overwritten when you import the same driver on to a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 site server
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2513499
From the title, you can probably guess what it fixes: Now, when importing duplicate drivers, if you specify a different category, it will be added to the list of categories instead of overwriting the list that is already there. As a result, the “Added Predictability” model is fairly simple to implement (without the need for scripting). Look at this basic scenario:
- Download all the drivers for a Dell Latitude E6410 and import those, specifying a category of “Latitude E6410”.
- Download all the drivers for a Dell Latitude E6510 and import those, specifying a category of “Latitude E6510”.
Without the hotfix, all the common drivers would end up with a category of “Latitude E6510”. With the hotfix, they would have both categories specified.
Here is a presentation I’ve done for a few user groups covering MDT 2012 and ConfigMgr 2012 Beta products. This goes over the OSD changes in both products and what you can expect from the new releases.
The information provided in this Power Point is provided as-is and the content is subject to change since this information is gathered from Beta products.
Enjoy!
Michael Niehaus has a new post on MDT 2012 Beta 1.
Read his original post here.
Those of you who deploy both x86 and x64 versions of Windows 7 using MDT 2010 Lite Touch probably know that you have to use two different boot images to do it: When booted from a Lite Touch x86 boot image, you only see task sequences associated with x86 operating systems; when booted from a Lite Touch x64 boot image, you only see task sequences associated with x64 operating systems.
With MDT 2012 Beta 1, that’s been changed. Now, if you boot from a Lite Touch x86 boot image you will see all task sequences, whether x86 or x64.
But there is one “gotcha”: If you choose a task sequence that deploys an x64 OS, MDT will need to find a copy of the corresponding x86 setup files and it will then use those to install the x64 OS. So you need to make sure that you have x86 setup files in the deployment share (with one of the operating systems), even if you aren’t deploying that operating system. It needs to match the version (e.g. 6.1.7601.17514) of the x64 OS that you are deploying. (This is the really the same as if you were deploying a custom image. Now, we just make sure we pick a copy of setup files that match the Windows PE platform being used, ignoring those that don’t, even if they are provided with the OS being deployed.)
The other combination, booting from an x64 boot image and deploying an x86 OS, isn’t supported by Windows Setup, so we still hide x86 task sequences when you have booted into an x64 boot image.
Michael Niehaus has a new post on UEFI support for MDT 2012 beta.
Read the full post here.
One of the new features that has been added to Lite Touch Installation in MDT 2012 Beta 1 is support for deploying 64-bit Windows to machines configured to use UEFI. So what exactly does that mean? That’s no simple question.
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What is UEFI?
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What benefits do you get from UEFI?
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What is different about the UEFI deployment process?
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What about MDT 2012?
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Can you really tell the difference?
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Caveat Lector
Maik Koster has a new post on a new feature in MDT 2012.
Be sure to read his full post here.
As probably most of you have seen already, the Beta 1 of the upcoming MDT 2012 has been published to connect (Download link) recently (Announcement by Michael Niehaus). Main intent for this update is enabling support for the upcoming ConfigMgr 2012. But the team also included a couple other updates into this release like a “prettier” wizard, Cross-Platform support, etc. However some of the bigger changes “under the hood” did happen on the part that handles all drive and disk related activities like UEFI Support, creating partitions, formatting, etc.
While the Cross-Platform support is really helpful if you need to deploy to different architectures and I’m for sure will have a look on the new wizard, actually my personal highlight in this version is the added support for VHD during deployments. So lets have a look on how that works.
Want to check out Beta 2 of ConfigMgr 2012, but just don’t have the time to get a lab setup? Problem solved! Microsoft has just released the VHD download for Beta 2.
Download here.
This download comes as a pre-configured Virtual Hard Disk (VHD). It enables you to evaluate System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 on Windows Server 2008 R2.
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