anyweb

ok i've looked through your log file using Tracer32 and can't find anything odd apart from the disk being formatted after you've installed software (if that's how i'm reading it...) so... can you please take note of exactly WHERE in the task sequence it fails (what section, enabled F8 in boot.wim and press it at the start of the task sequence to STOP any reboot when it fails) i need you to tell me what is the error message (if any) you see on screen when it fails cheers anyweb

welcome to the forums ! feel free to contribute anything that you learn or come across,

looks like its missing some, can you email it to me anyweb AT hotmail DOT com cheers anyweb

What is it ? Windows System Image Manager is a tool for editing XML files used in the deployment of Vista/Windows Server 2008. These XML files are sets of instructions telling Windows Setup how to proceed and install itself, in the past we would have edited such files (sysprep.inf, unattend.txt) using notepad, but now Windows has grown up and so has its' tools. You can use Windows SIM to create an answer file (autounattend.xml or unattend.xml) that partitions and formats a disk before installing Windows, you can create an XML file for an unattended install of Vista/Server 2008, and then automate the process by copying the finished AutoUnattend.xml file to either the root of a USB key or the root of a Windows Vista (or Server 2008) DVD. When Windows setup starts it will query these locations if present for the file and if it finds the file it will use the settings found within. Tip: If you create an unattend.xml file using Windows System Image Manager (SIM) and you want to allow users to install Windows Vista with no user interaction, you would need to rename the file to autounattend.xml and copy it to the root of a USB Flash Drive. How do I get it ? Windows SIM is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) so if you want it then you'll need to install the WAIK first. Note: this guide is aimed at customising Windows Vista. If you want to use Windows SIM to customise Windows 7 deployments then you'll need The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 which you can download here. As you can see from the screenshot above, there are 5 main areas to Windows SIM, and they are as follows: 1. distribution share (may contain $OEM$ Folders, Out-of-Box Drivers or the Packages directories, requires at least one of these dirs to be recognised as a DS) 2. windows image 3. answer file 4. properties 5. messages When you start Windows SIM for the first time however, the above panes will all be blank as in the screenshot below How can I use it ? Before you can use Windows SIM you are going to need your Windows Vista DVD or your Windows Server 2008 DVD, so locate them and once done copy the contents of one of them to a folder locally. eg: c:\source\w2k8dvd Now that you have a local copy of the DVD, you can use that as your Windows source (we need to point number 2 above to the install.wim file on the local source). So let's do that, right click on Select a Windows Image and choose Select Windows Image browse to the Local directory which contains a copy of your Windows DVD and choose the sources directory within there, select the install.wim file select an Image from the DVD, in my case I'm using a Windows Server 2008 64bit source.... I select Longhorn ServerStandard from the choices available Once done, you may get prompted to create a Catalog file, answer Yes. The catalog file contains descriptions of what components and packages the image contains so may take a few minutes to generate. After the Catalog file is created, our Windows Image pane will list some new nodes called Components and Packages and you can expand them to see what lies within. create New Answer File Now that we have our Windows Image loaded, we will want to configure it so in the Answer File pane, right click and choose New Answer File Now that we have a new answer file we can start to configure it, and to do so we need to add components or packages from the Windows Image pane to our Answer file, and then we can make changes to the options we have chosen. Set Regional and Language options In the Windows Image pane, expand the Components node and select Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE, in my example I have a amd64_ infront of Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE because I am using a 64bit image. If you are using 32 bit, yours will say X86_Microsoft-Windows-International-Core-WinPE right click on the option and choose Add Setting to Pass 1 Windows PE In the Answer File section, expand the newly added setting and enter en-US as the value for Input Locale, System Locale,, UILanguge, UILanguageFallback and UserLocale expand the SetupUILanguage option beneath, and add the en-US value to the UILanguage option Validate our changes We have now created an answer file and configured our language and regional options, it is important to understand that you can easily make mistakes creating an answer file, and Windows SIM has a checking tool built in to verify your changes, so to do that click on Validate answer File and look in the Messages pane for any messages. In addition to the above you may want to do the following actions how can I join a Domain using Windows SIM how can I configure the hard disc using Windows SIM how can I install drivers using windows SIM how can I change computername using Windows SIM how can I add the product key using Windows SIM how can I edit the EULA, FullName and Organization settings using Windows SIM how can I decide which version of Windows get's installed using Windows SIM Troubleshooting Technet Resources > http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766073.aspx if something is not going as planned, you can browse the C:\Windows\ and C:\Windows\Panther folders for log files, in particular the setupact.log and setuperr.log files pressing left Shift and F10 together will bring up a command prompt during the Windows setup stage if you wish to view the files using notepad. Some errors you may encounter: this will happen at boot time and may occur after you have added new drivers to your USB key or DVD (or network share..), verify that the drivers are not causing a problem with network connectivity, for example if you've added a 3G modem driver and the error occurs, then you'll have to add that driver at a later stage of the installation. Additional Reading:- Document: Windows Automated Installation Kit for Windows 7 documentation (May 2010 Update) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=f1bae135-4190-4d7c-b193-19123141edaa Video: How Do I: Unattended Answer Files Using Windows System Image http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd179859.aspx Podcast: How Do I: Get Ready for Windows 7 Deployment with the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) ? http://www.microsoft.com/events/podcasts/default.aspx?seriesID=Series-acd4d6bf-efe0-4f7e-a1f6-13eecb0b28d6.xml&pageId=x6865&source=Microsoft-Podcasts-about-Windows-7:-Increase-Productivity,-Improve-Security,-and-Streamline-PC-Management&WT.rss_ev=a

ok check C:\_SMSTaskSequence\ instead i need the SMSTS.log file (all of it) to see what is going wrong

Johan Arwidmark posted this .

can you post the SMSTS.log file which is most likely DATED in the filename look in c:\windows\system32\ccm\logs cheers anyweb

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sounds interesting ! I assume you've already made yourself familiar with the SMS/SCCM section here ? what do you mean by this > cheers anyweb

hi Jean and welcome ! i hope you can also contribute here in the near future :-) how are you testing sccm ? in a virtual lab or real ?

i've done the guide and it's in two parts you can find part 1 here and here's part two

excellent that you solved the problem and even bettter that you posted HOW here, well done and best of luck with the rest, you know that if you replace the pxeboot.exe with pxeboot.n12 you'll stop it prompting for 'press f12...' and vice versa cheers anyweb

PXE boot the client and start the deployment PXE boot your client Windows PE should start and the Task Sequence should kick in... and XP is being installed after a reboot you'll see some old familiar XP setup screens... then back to the XP setup GUI if you get this error then you'll know that you need to edit your Task Sequence and change the following setting (Apply Windows Settings) back to the Task Sequence... Just before running Sysprep, the task sequence will run the 'Install Deployment Tools' section within our Task Sequence and you may see a failure here where you get an error similar to If you get this error then verify the following: 1. you have added the Windows XP network driver for the client's network card as a driver in SCCM and added it to a driver package and added in to the Task Sequence 2. create a distribution point and then updated the distribution point for the network driver package Once done, re-run the TS and all should be ok. running Sysprep capturing the sysprepped XP image to a WIM file and storing it on our SCCM server After the capture is done, the computer will restart and boot into XP, at this point you now have a captured WIM file with your Windows XP image. You can use that WIM file to Deploy your XP clients. In other words, you now have a WIM image of a Sysprepped Windows XP installation targetted for the hardware you just ran this on. You now have the options to * create a new Operating System Image using this WIM file,. and then create a new Task Sequence for deploying it to bare metal pcs, or * use a Custom Installation DVD. or deploy this image using imageX or other methods like WDS\MDT, but you really want to use SCCM for this right ?

Import computer into the collection In the Operating System Deployment section, right click on computer Association and choose import computer information, select import single computer for computername call the computer bacapXP fill in the MAC or GUID details (or both) the MAC or GUID can be obtained from the bios screen when the client PXE boots.... click next for the data preview, check for typos on the Choose target collection screen, click browse and scroll down to our Build and Capture XP collection, select it review the summary and click next then click close at the confirmation screen

Advertise the Task sequence We will now advertise the Task Sequence to the Build and Capture XP Collection we created in Part 1, so to do this right click on the Task Sequence and choose Advertise. On the general screen click browse and select the Build and Capture XP Collection make it available to boot media and pxe Schedule Set your schedule depending on whether you are in a Lab or Production Environment. For a Lab Environment Make the Task Sequence mandatory by clicking on the yellow star and select As soon as possible. Select ignore maintenance windows when runing program and allow system restart, set the program rerun behaviour to always rerun program so that we can rerun the task sequence over and over as we require for testing. For a Production Environment In a Production environment set the advertisement from Mandatory to Optional, this gives us less risk of an accidental deployment but also introduces the possibilty of choice. if you want to remove choice then keep the advertisement mandatory but change the program rerun behaviour to never rerun (see below screenshot). set the distribution points as follows: and interaction options... click next through security, summary and progress and close at the confirmation screen after verifying all is ok

Edit the Task Sequence Now that we have made our task sequence let's make the deployment process faster by forcing the Format process to do a quick format. Right-click on the TS and select Edit. In the Task Sequence, click on Partition Disk 0 and then click (to highlight) the Default volume listed, once done you can edit the properties of it by clicking on the middle icon (edit, see screenshot) when the partition details come up, place a checkmark in Quick Format click OK when done.

Create a Package from Definition for the ConfigManager Client complete the following Step (step 3). Create distribution point and then update it complete the following Step (step 4) >> continue on to complete the next part

Create a Distribution Point and Update it for the Sysprep Package Expand the Sysprep Package we have just created in ConfigMgr and right click on Distribution Points choose New Distribution Points Click next and select only the standard distribution point (exactly as we did above for the Operating System Install package), click close when done. Once created, right-click on distribution points again and this time choose Update Distribution Points. answer Yes when prompted

Create the XP SP3 sysprep package download the XP SP3 deploy.cab file and extract its' contents (or just the sysyprep.inf file) to a folder called sysprep. Create a network share and copy the contents of the sysprep folder into the share, call the share sysprep. Note: if you are trying to deploy XP SP2 then use this one instead. Note that the Sysprep package will be used in a step called Install Deployment Tools which must happen after Setup Windows and ConfigMgr step but before the Prepare Configmgr Client step, we will be creating the task sequence in the next part and it will automatically insert that step in the correct place, however we need to define the Sysprep Package first. I'd also recommend you copy your unattend.txt file to the sysprep package, we will use this to make changes to our Windows XP image in the Apply Operating System Image step (see below) In ConfigMgr expand the Software Distribution node and right click on Packages and choose New Package. fill in the package details for Data Source, point the wizard to the sysprep share you created earlier eg: \\WIN-AE2V1IRN067\sysprep leave Data Access as it is Leave Distribution Settings as they are for reporting and security just click next, and click next again at the summary and review your actions on the confirmation screen. Note: If you are trying to deal with AHCI drivers via sysprep then please read this post

Create a New Collection In SCCM ConfigMgr, highlight collections, right click and choose New Collection, fill in the collection general details and call this collection Build And Capture XP leave Membership Rules blank click OK to the warning click next on the advertisements and security screens click close when done

Create a Distribution Point for our Install Package expand the Install package we've just created and right click on Distribution Points, choose New Distribution Points click next when the wizard appears and select only the first distribution point, do not select the PXE distribution point as this is not a boot image. click close at the confirmation screen Now the we have created the distribution point for the operating system install package, let's update the distribution point. Right click on Distribution Points and choose Update Distribution Points answer Yes to the confirmation

i'll try and do it this week, watch this space................

sounds like this have you actually configured WDS at all or just configured the dhcp options ? is there a switch between the windows 2008 server and the novell dhcp server ?

hi webuser, if you understand how SCCM works then the following guide should help you give it a try at least and let us know does it work or not, If I have time to do an XP guide I will, but right now I don't.... cheers anyweb

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