Fixing broken SMSSLP settings

MadLuka has a great post here about some issues related to the R3 upgrade for the SCCM client. Basically, deploying this hotfix without respecifying the correct parameters can knock out your SMSSLP settings on your clients. This is not an issue if your clients can find the management point using WINS, DNS or Active Directory, but is a massive issue if you have workgroup clients that don't use these technologies.

Our fix was to roll out the registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCM\SMSSLP to all affected machines and this fixed the issue.

SCCM 2012 RC2 released

Microsoft have released the open beta of Configuration Manager 2012 Release Candidate 2. It can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/system-center/configuration-manager-2012.aspx.

Uninstalling the SCCM Client

The only supported method of uninstalling the client is ccmsetup /uninstall (See Technet).

On most systems this executable is found at C:\WINDOWS\system32\ccmsetup

But since Operating System Deployment relies on the SCCM client, how do you uninstall it as part of a task sequence? The answer is simple - schtasks.

The following command should work as the last step in a task sequence-

schtasks /create /tn "Remove SCCM Client" /tr "C:\WINDOWS\system32\ccmsetup /uninstall" /sc ONSTART /Z /ru "SYSTEM"

It should work, but I've not tested it. It's one of those things that was a requirement, but was quickly dropped, so never even got into testing.

Dell starting to transition to advanced format 3.5" drives

Due to the flooding in Thailand, Dell have a announced they are to transition all their desktop systems to Advanced Format hard drives (see Dell article number 408172).

This will probably cause issues with your captured OSD images. For Windows 7 deployments, Microsoft have issued a hotfix (here), but this has been included in Service Pack 1. Windows XP looks like it'll be a bit more complex to get working with the new drives. I'll be blogging more about this once we get our hands on the samples from Dell.

In the meantime, these drives are being phased in, and Dell warn that "multi-unit shipments may include both Advanced Format and conventional (512b) drives."

Deploying the Novell client as part of an OSD Task Sequence

After posting the Novell client GINA fix I remembered how difficult it was to get the Novell client to install as part of a Task Sequence. After trying many different approaches to get the setup to run as an SCCM program, the trick (and it is a trick) is to use the Run Command Line step instead of creating a program.

For some reason, the client install works fine when run like this. Use the same command line as an SCCM program, and it fails. An interesting side effect of running as a Run Command Line step is that you see the install dialog boxes that are normally hidden.

Of course, you still need to make sure OSD sets the correct GINA at the end of the task sequence - I've provided a tiny script to do this job here.

It's also worth noting that this has been tested on a legacy version of the Novell client (as you can see from the picture!). Later versions of the client may not have this issue.

Fixing the Novell client GINA in an OSD Task Sequence

I wrote this bit of code to force XP to display the correct GINA in a Novell environment when you deploy your build with OSD. It's a simple bit of code implementing this advice from the OSD team on how to get SCCM to swap out the GINA at the end of the build.

' Fix novell gina for OSD
'
' v1.0 09/Feb/2009
'
  on error resume next

  set oShell = WScript.CreateObject ("Wscript.Shell")

' From http://blogs.technet.com/inside_osd/archive/2008/06/06/installing-a-custom-gina.aspx

  
  RegPath = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\"

  oshell.RegWrite Regpath & "GinaDLL", "OSDGINA.DLL", "REG_SZ"
  oshell.RegWrite Regpath & "OSDOldGinaDLL", "NWGINA.DLL", "REG_SZ"

  WScript.Quit

Downloading and installing the SCCM 2012 prerequisites

There are a number of prerequisites to install on your server before running the SCCM 2012 installer. Even once the SCCM installer is running, it wants to download some more prerequisites. If you are installing onto a non-network connected machine for testing purposes, you'll need to grab these files by running the installer on some other network connected machine beforehand. I ran this on my Windows 7 x64 workstation, but any modern 64-bit Microsoft OS should do.

From a CMD prompt-

1. Create a folder for the downloaded files (eg mkdir c:\sccm2012prereq)
2. Navigate to smssetup\bin\x64 in the SCCM 2012 source directory
3. Run setupDL.exe c:\sccm2012prereq

You will also need .net Framework version 4.0. This is downloaded as part of the prerequisite step so you can install it on your server from the sccm2012prereq folder. There are two installs, you need to use the dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe, not the client version as noted in the release notes. Surprisingly the SCCM 2012 installer doesn't automatically install this.

Before you can install SCCM 2012, you'll also need to install SQL Server (I'll cover this in a later post), and some roles and features for Server 2008. The roles and features can be easily installed with the following commands-

servermanagercmd -install web-server
servermanagercmd -install web-mgmt-compat
servermanagercmd -install rdc
servermanagercmd -install bits