Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Creating a Task sequence from Scratch

In ConfigMgr 2007, We need to create a Task Sequence to deploy the OS package we have created.


Task Sequence is something similar to the program which we create for the Software distribution. In OS deployment it’s called as Task sequence.
We shall see how to create the task sequence step by step.
Right click Task Sequences and select New>Task Sequence as shown below.

Select create a new custom task sequence

 Type a name for the task sequence and click browse and select a boot image as shown below and click next, next and close.

Right click the created task sequence below and click edit.

Click add and select new group
Rename the group and type some description.
Click Options>Click Add Condition>Task Sequence Variable.


Type “_SMSTSInWinPE” in the variable and select “equals” in the condition and type “true” in the value. Click ok
Create another group called "Deploy Base Image" under Windows 7.

Then click on Deploy Base Image group and click Add>General>Restart Computer as shown below.
Click Option>Add Condition and type “_SMSTSInWinPE” for variable and "False" for value.


then click Add>Disks>Format and Partition Disk.


Click the yellow star icon to add partitions as required.
Then click Add>Images>Apply operating system image.
 Click Browse and select any of the OS image package which you may have created earlier.


Add another group under Windows 7 called Drivers”.  To bring the group or task down use the up/down buttons located on top.
To add driver package for each model, click add>drivers>apply driver package and select a driver package from those you may have created earlier.
Select unattended installation of unsigned drivers.

Then select options>add condition>Query WMI and type the query for any model like one as shown here. For each model you have to change the model name between the %% signs. Then click ok.


 Then lets create a group and name it as "Configure Image" under which we construct other steps.
Select this group and click Add>Settings>apply windows settings.

Type in the settings as required. Type the right product key.

Then Click Add>Images>Setup Windows and Configmgr.
click Browse and choose the Configmgr client package from the pacakges list.


then you may have to type in the installation properties like below.

SMSCACHESIZE=4096

then you may have to add any softwares that needs to be installed. for that you can click Add>General>Install Software.

Then click Add>General>Join Domain or Workgroup and enter domain name, credentials, etc.

Then click Add>General>Install Software Updates>

Choose All Software Updates. Software upates must have been deployed to the collection to which the task sequence is advertised.

Click Ok finally.






Thursday, December 13, 2012

Configmgr 2007 OS deployment user interface

Type: HTA

Usage: Configmgr 2007 OS deployment.



This HTA can be customised and used as a user interface to get input from user during Configmgr OS deployment and run the task sequence accordingly.

This is added in the begining of the task sequence and as per the input from the user, the Tasksequence variables are set. so you may need to set the task sequence variables additionally in the variuos steps.

You can download the hta file from the below link.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/67572103/configmgr_osdoptions.hta


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Local Group Policies affected by ConfigMgr 2007 Software Updates


                   When ConfigMgr Software Updates client agent is enabled, the local group policy used by windows update agent "Specify intranet Microsoft update service location" will be modified by ConfigMgr agent at the client side. There are 15 other policies which are related to Windows Update Agent as well. Those will not be modified by the ConfigMgr.










            It's advised to not configure other policies in AD. Although disabling the policies in AD won't make any difference it's better to leave it NOT CONFIGURED. But if the "Specify intranet Microsoft update service location" policy is configured in AD, it will cause the below error in WUAhandler.log
"Group policy settings were overwritten by a higher authority" and scan gets affected.
The above Group policies can be found under: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components in GPO editor.

Peer Mohamed | Senior System Engineer