Bart’s Blog

I ran into trouble booting a Dell Precision M4500 and a Dell Latitude E6510 with my WinPe x64 boot image.

My boot image was loaded with the network drivers from the WinPE drivers .cab from the Dell site ftp://ftp.dell.com/sysman/Dell-WinPE-Drivers-A02.CAB, but I didn’t get connected to the network.

Great repository by the way if you’re installing mainly Dell machines with SCCM or MDT: Dell’s business client os deployment cab files. Here you find all drivers for the different Dell machine models grouped in .cab files per machine type.

Adding the network drivers from the E6510 or M4500 .cab’s didn’t solve the issue. The driver for the Intel 82577LC just wouldn’t load.

The problem was solved by using the Prowinx64 driver (e1k62x64.inf) from the Intel site.

Need to run HTML applications elevated and want to add “run as administratior” in the context menu of files with the .hta extension?

Add following registry keys via .reg file:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\htafile\shell\runas\command]
@=”C:\\Windows\\system32\\mshta.exe \”%1\” %*”
“IsolatedCommand”=”C:\\Windows\\system32\\mshta.exe \”%1\” %*”

Or make use of group policy preferences to provision the keys to your machines.

When using SCCM OSD to deploy operating systems there are several options to start the deployment process and to add the unknown computer to the SCCM DB (SCCM’s unknown computer support, using a pre-execution hook).

I created a customized WinPE boot image that can be booted via CD or USB. Via startnet.cmd a small .hta is executed followed by the tsbootshell.exe to start the task sequence:

%SYSTEMDRIVE%\windows\system32\MSHTA.exe x:\sccmhookECON.hta
%SYSTEMDRIVE%\sms\bin\i386\TsBootShell.exe

The .hta is used to query some variables (computer name, the collection where we’ll be adding the computer, the keyboard layout, the owner of the system). A WMI call is used to get the mac-address of the LAN adapter. Values are stored via a webservice in a SQL DB. 

Next we use the web service from the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to determine if the system is known in SCCM. If necessary to the system is added to the queried SCCM collection.

My quick cheat sheet for editing my customized SCCM boot image. These commands mount the bootimage, add some drivers and create an ISO image:

"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\Servicing\dism" /mount-wim /wimfile:c:\winpe_build\ISO\sources\boot.wim /index:1 /mountdir:c:\mount

"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\Servicing\dism" /image:c:\mount /add-driver /driver:c:\temp\parallelspd40_net /recurse /forceunsigned

"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\Servicing\dism" /unmount-wim /mountdir:c:\mount /commit

"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86\oscdimg" -n -bc:\winpe_build\etfsboot.com c:\winpe_build\ISO c:\temp\customboot.iso

Use this procedure if you ever need a mandatory profile for your W2K8 remote desktop servers or Windows 7 based “appstations”.

• create a profile share on the fileserver (eg. \\server\profileshare$).
• Configure sharelevel security:
  • Domain admins (FC)
  • Authenticated users ‘(R)
• Create a local user on the server that will be used to create and customize the profile and make this user member of the local administrators group.
• Logon with this local admin and customize the profile as wanted.
• Logoff and login again with the domain account.
• Maker sure your explorer’s view settings are configured to show all extensions, hidden files, os files etc.
• Copy the profile directory from the c:\users\ directory to the profiles share.
• Add the .V2 extension to the profile directory. This makes the profile only available for client OS >Vista and server OS >W2K8.
  (eg \\server\profileshare$\mandatory.v2)
• Load the ntuser.dat file using regedit (we’ll use this to put the correct permissions on the profile’s registry).
• On the hive that you just loaded configure following permissions:
  • Remove all existing permissions
  • Add Authenticated users (R) and check the replace parent permission box.
• Unload the hive.
• Rename ntuser.dat –> ntuser.man (this makes it a mandatory profile).
• Delete the \local and \locallow directories from the .\appdata directory.
• Delete the .log files from the root profile dir (only keep the .man and .ini file).
• Correct NTFS permissions on the profile directory:
  • uncheck “inherit from parent”
  • remove “administrators” and “users”
  • add “domain admins” (FC)
  • add “authenticated users” (R&E, List all folders, Read)
• Assign the profile via GPO (computer\administrative templates\system\user profiles\set roaming profile path for all users logging on to this computer) or on the user object (do not add the .V2 extension to the profile path).

If you use Windows Search Server 2008 or MOSS 2007 as an enterpise search solution than you can easily use this search engine via Vista search or Windows desktop search.

To integrate your enterprise search in Vista configure the policy Instant Search policy setting via local policy (gpedit.msc) or Active Directory GPO.

Or for the “old fashioned” registry hackers: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\SearchExtensions.

Enter following search string: “http://MylabSrch.mylab.local/searchcenter/pages/results.aspx?k=%w “

After a gpupdate you’ll see the new search option(“My intranet locations” in my case):

For XP/2003, if you’re using Windows (desktop) Search 4.0 there will be a “Administrative Templates -> Windows Desktop Search -> Search -> Add Primary Intranet Search Location” computer GPO option.

Having trouble uninstalling an application via control panel? In that case you can try the “Windows installer cleanup utility”.

When trying to create a Vista reference image via an SCCM Operating System install package, my Task Sequence kept failing on the “Configuring Windows and ConfigMgr” task. Vista setup returned “error 31″ (boot critical device driver issue). 

The setupapi log showed that the system was failing on ICH7USB.INF.

Apparently the driver references USBUI.DLL. This file is not present on WinPE.

Copying USBUI.DLL from a Vista machine to the windows\system32 directory of your PE boot image will serve as a workaround.

You can download hotfixes from the Microsoft hotfix self-service site if you know the related KB number.

Use following URL format:

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=KBNumber&kbln=KBLanguage

Example:

http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=958011&kbln=en-us

If you need to remove sync partnerships with systems that are no longer available, or if you want to recover from a corrupt CSC cache then you can use the following procedure to re-initialize the offline cache.

1. Locate the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC
2. Point to New, and then click Key.
3. Type Parameters in the box.
4. Right-click Parameters, point to New, and then click DWORD (32-bit)Value.
5. Type FormatDatabase, and then press ENTER.
6. Right-click FormatDatabase, and then click Modify.
7. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
8. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942974