May 2009 - Posts
If you try the technique below on an install of Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (sp2), it fails. I don’t remember the exact error, but it translates to the wrong required sp level. It’s simple fix though as detailed here: http://blog.stealthpuppy.com/windows/windows-2003-r2-and-integrated-service-pack-2.
I just stumbled on this today; i.e., I can’t take credit for all of it (http://develnet.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html).
It is a great way to restart a task sequence from within Windows PE preventing the lengthy hardware reboots particularly on servers. Simply kill TsmBootstrap.exe and start a new instance of TsBootShell.exe. You can kill TsmBootstrap.exe by starting the command prompt and then starting task manager by typing “taskmgr” (unfortunately, taskkill is not available by default in PE). You can then launch a new instance of TsBootShell.exe from the command prompt or the run line of task manager – do not kill the existing instance of TsBootShell as this is the main shell used by PE during OSD and killing it will cause all other processes to be closed and the system to reboot.
This mainly works if you forgot to advertise the TS properly or the TS never really kicks off properly but you are still in PE. If the TS bombed part way through, it leaves files behind that prevent a new TS from properly starting. The one time I had a chance to test this on a failure half-way through the process, it gave an error about not being able to properly read the TS environment (or something like that). In hindsight, we should have formatted the C drive from the command-prompt and tried again, but it was late on Friday we we weren’t thinking straight anymore.
The entire scenario is difficult to test as a whole, so your mileage may vary but what do you have to lose if the TS bombed anyway.
Just thought I’d document the steps taken at a recent customer engagement for deploying Windows Server 2003 with the R2 bits in the image.
1. Copy the entire R2 CD to your package source repository.
2. Create a standard software distribution package for the R2 source directory.
3. Create a program with the following command-line:
CMPNENTS\R2\setup2.exe /q /a /sr
The command line options are documented at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc756937(WS.10).aspx.
4. In your build and capture task sequence, create an Install Software task for this new program at the beginning of your other software install tasks. Make sure you add a reboot somewhere after this task and before the capture.
5. To suppress the “Windows Server Post-Setup Security Updates” window, add a command line task near the end of the deployment TS with the following command:
reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\ServerOOBE\SecurityOOBE” /v DontLaunchSecurityOOBE /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
This registry key is documented at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757061(WS.10).aspx.
That’s it.
An oft troublesome “feature” of WDS is the PXE cache. This feature rears its head during OSD troubleshooting and testing and results in PXE boot aborted messages. Essentially, WDS lookups of systems in ConfigMgr are cached by WDS so that it doesn’t have to repeatedly query the database; items persist in the cache for 60 minutes by default. The known way to work around this issue is to adjust the timeout value of the cache in the registry at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SMS\PXE\CacheExpire. By default, this value is 3600 seconds and reducing this value to something much lower, like 300 seconds should help during testing and troubleshooting scenarios.
Microsoft just release a new patch to address this issue: Operating system deployment fails in a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP1 environment if you deploy a different operating system to a client within one hour of a previous deployment (969113). Its not clear from the KB how the patch addresses this issue though, so I suggest downloading it to a test system and testing it out. When I do, I’ll post a follow-up.
A couple of minor fixes and the new release is ready: http://osdappchooser.codeplex.com.
2.0.0.3b
· Added graceful handling of comments in the XML configuration file
· Removed dependence on oledlg.dll
· Made the window appear on top of all others including the TS progress bar
