Tag: Deployment

Installing .Net 3.5 Fails on Windows 8 With 0x800F0906 Error

I tried to install Live Essentials 2012 on Windows 8 and it required .NET 3.5.  I tried to install it (both download and from Programs and Features) and the installer tried to download the code.  The download would fail with a 0x800F0906 error:

Windows couldn’t connect to the Internet to download necessary files. Make sure that you’re connected to the Internet, and click Retry to try again.

Some googling ensued and I found a fix.  Pop in the installation media for Windows 8 and run DISM from an elevated (admin) command prompt.  E: was the path to my Windows 8 installation USB.

image

Not exactly user friendly!  The Live Essentials 2012 install worked fine after that.

It appears that this is caused by the machine being policy configured to use WSUS or similar with the download of .NET 3.5 not being available.

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The Importance Of KMS Product Keys & Activation To Deployment, VDI, & Cloud Computing

There are two types of product key for Windows & Office:

  • MAK: The one that you’re used to typing into a machine
  • KMS: A special enter-it-once-for-the-network product key

MAK is nice and simple, if you’re only deploying a handful of machines.  But if you need to deploy dozens, hundreds or thousands, of machines, are you going to (a) trust the end user to activate (God help you if you think that’ll work!) or (b) run around and activate stuff by hand (why put in a deployment system because you’re obviously training for a marathon).

Some examples:

  • Deploying Windows or Office using ConfigMgr: Automated remote deployment where you can’t be everywhere and you need activation to just happen
  • VDI: VMs are being fired up and destroyed like crazy
  • Cloud: Hosts are deployed with zero touch from VMM, and VMs are deployed without any knowledge of IT.  You don’t want customers calling helpdesk about activation alerts.

MAK just isn’t going to work. With a KMS server on your network then you can automate the activation process of Windows and Office on the network.  The products reach out to KMS and activate without human effort.

Two posts will be useful:

  1. Some background and setup information in an old post that I wrote.
  2. A post this morning by fellow MVP Didier Van Hoye where he has described out to update a KMS to use the new KMS keys for WS2012.

Use MDT 2012 Update 1 To Deploy Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Images

Microsoft has released the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 Update 1 with support for deploying images of Windows 8 and WS2012.  It also supports Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.

New features include:

  • Added support for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
  • Support for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1 CTP: Added support in MDT for deploying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 with Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 CTP, while supporting all new Configuration Manager functionality (offline BitLocker, UEFI, and Assessment and Deployment Kit).
  • Support for DaRT 8 Beta: Updated MDT to support DaRT 8 for Windows 8 deployments, while continuing to support DaRT 7 for Windows 7 deployments. Added DaRT support for Configuration Manager scenarios.
  • New “Build Your Own Pages” User-Driven Installation (UDI) feature: Enhanced the UDI wizard and designer to enable IT pros to design their own wizard pages with little effort.
  • New System Center 2012 – Orchestrator support: Provided the ability to add steps into an OS deployment task sequence to execute Orchestrator runbooks as part of the deployment process.
  • Other improvements: Added support for Windows PowerShell 3.0, reworked Roles and Features installation logic for Windows 8, improved “boot from VHD” deployment scenarios, and added support for Configuration Manager monitoring.

So if you want to deploy the new operating systems then don’t do sneaker net. Don’t go buy a third party imaging solution.  This is a free, task sequence based imaging solution.  And your investment will continue when/if you deploy System Center 2012 Configuration Manager with SP1 because of the integration it has with MDT.

Activating Windows 8 Enterprise Fails

I installed Windows 8 Enterprise (RTM) on my Build slate PC last night and I noticed in PC Settings that the sucker would fail to activate:

"Windows can’t activate right now." Error Code: 0x8007232B

It appears that the Enterprise edition defaults to searching for a KMS to activate on, as you’d expect in an enterprise network.  I mentioned it to one of the guys in work and he just posted me the fix from the TechNet Forums:

  1. Search for CMD
  2. Run it as administrator (elevated command prompt)
  3. Run slmgr.vbs –ipk <YOUR_PRODUCT_KEY>, e.g slmgr.vbs –ipk ABCDE-12345-ABCDE-12345-ABCDE

And Bob’s your Uncle!

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Sysprep & Disk Cloning Guidance Updated To Include Windows 8 & Windows Server 2012

Microsoft has updated the guidance on disk duplication and image deployment for all supported versions of Windows including Win8 and WS2012.

There is an interesting note on cloning Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.  The following problems might happen:

  • Tile, badge, and toast notifications do not update even though Internet connectivity is available.
  • Apps that rely on RAW notification do not work as expected. For example, you notice significantly reduced functionality in Mail, Calendar, and Messaging.
  • It takes a long time to synchronize changes for roaming and family safety settings.

Either of these fixes will solve the problem:

  • Configure the computers by using the Sysprep /generalize command, and then deploy the image.
  • Replace the existing user account with a new account. The device identifier is stored as part of the user profile. Each new NTUser account that is added to a computer will receive a new identifier.
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Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit for Windows 8 Release Preview

With Windows 7, Microsoft release a bunch of individual tools and toolkits, each as individual downloads, to aid in our assessment, deployment, and application compatibility testing/reconciliation.  With Windows 8, Microsoft are continuing with the free support tools, but it appears that they will be released in a single kit called the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK).

The tools in the Windows ADK include:

Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT): The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) helps IT Professionals understand potential application compatibility issues by identifying which applications are or are not compatible with the new versions of the Windows operating system. ACT helps to lower costs for application compatibility evaluation by providing an accurate inventory of the applications in your organization. ACT helps you to deploy Windows more quickly by helping to prioritize, test, and detect compatibility issues with your apps. By using ACT, you can become involved in the ACT Community and share your risk assessment with other ACT users. You can also test your web applications and web sites for compatibility with new releases of Internet Explorer. For more information, see Application Compatibility Toolkit.

Deployment Tools: Deployment tools enable you to customize, manage, and deploy Windows images. Deployment tools can be used to automate Windows deployments, removing the need for user interaction during Windows setup. Tools included with this feature are Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management (DISM) command line tool, DISM PowerShell cmdlets, DISM API, Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM), and OSCDIMG. For more information, see Deployment Tools.

User State Migration Tool (USMT): USMT is a scriptable command line tool that IT Professionals can use to migrate user data from a previous Windows installation to a new Windows installation. By using USMT, you can create a customized migration framework that copies the user data you select and excludes any data that does not need to be migrated. Tools included with the feature are ScanState, Loadstate, and USMTUtils command line tools. For more information, see User State Migration Tool.

Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT): The Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) enables IT professionals to automate and centrally manage the activation of Windows, Windows Server, Windows ThinPC, Windows POSReady 7, select add-on product keys, and Office for computers in their organization. VAMT can manage volume activation using retail keys (or single activation keys), multiple activation keys (MAKs), or Windows Key Management Service (KMS) keys. For more information, see Volume Activation Management Tool.

Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT): Windows Performance Toolkit includes tools to record system events and analyze performance data in a graphical user interface. Tools available in this toolkit include Windows Performance Recorder, Windows Performance Analyzer, and Xperf. For more information, see Windows Performance Toolkit.

Windows Assessment Toolkit: Tools to discover and run assessments on a single computer. Assessments are tasks that simulate user activity and examine the state of the computer. Assessments produce metrics for various aspects of the system, and provide recommendations for making improvements. For more information, see Windows Assessment Toolkit.
Windows Assessment Services: Tools to remotely manage settings, computers, images, and assessments in a lab environment where Windows Assessment Services is installed. This application can run on any computer with access to the server that is running Windows Assessment Services. For more information, see Windows Assessment Services.

Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE): Minimal operating system designed to prepare a computer for installation and servicing of Windows. For more information, see Windows PE Technical Reference.

If OS deployment is your thing or in your future then this kit and you are going to be close friends.

Cloned Ubuntu VMs On Hyper-V Can’t Get DHCP Address

I’ve been doing some playing in the lab, trying to clone lots of Ubuntu VMs on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V.  It’s just lab work so I want the VMs to have DHCP addresses.  I am a forum browsing noob to Penguin-eering so all I’m doing is copying the VHDX file and attaching to VMs.  The problem is that when the copied VM starts up, it indicates during boot up that acquiring an IP configuration is taking too long (thus delaying the boot up) and running ifconfig when I’m logged in shows no DHCP address was acquired.

Cause?  It’s Linux’s desire to have sticky MAC addresses (which also causes problems if you have the default dynamic MAC addresses and you move/Live Migrate a Linux VM).  I did some Penguin-eering and found that there’s a file called 70-persistent-net.rules which can be found at /etc/udev/rules.d.  If you run:

cat /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules then you’ll see that it contains a rule that locks the network activity to your original VM’s MAC address.  Solution?  Delete that rule.

Ubuntu doesn’t have a default root (administrator) account enabled for direct login.  Instead you use a lesser account and elevate your privileges – it’s kind of like UAC but the concept has been in UNIX for a long time.  You’ll use sudo to accomplish this.  It’s relevant because 70-persistent-net.rules is a locked down system file.  On your reference VM you’ll need to do this before copying it.

sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules will edit the file using vi.  Navigate to the line in question.  Use dd (press dd twice) to delete the line.  Then press : and enter wq! to quit vi while writing the changes with no confirmation.  Did I mention that I started my career as a UNIX developer? Smile  Some old things are hard to forget.

Shutdown the VM (easiest way for us noobs is to use the shutdown command in Hyper-V Manager or POSH) which cleanly does this via the Hyper-V integration components that are built into the Linux kernel (featured in Ubuntu 12.04).

Now the VHDX can be copied and reused in new VMs.  Don’t worry if you’ve got already copied VMs.  Just do the above edit and reboot them and you’ll be sorted … or get their new MAC address from the VM properties, edit the rules file, and reboot.

EDIT: This will probably apply if using this cloning technique with any hypervisor.

Remember To Set Your Network Speed in ConfigMgr 2012 Multicast

I’m currently on a 2 week project on a customer site to install System Center 2012 Configuration Manager with a focus on OS deployment to bare metal and application installation.  It’s been fun dong my first production install of ConfigMgr 2012.  You can really only push it so far in a virtualised lab and quite a bit has changed since 2007 R3 – it’s kind of like moving from XP to Windows 8 Smile  The biggest challenge is finding where things have moved to.

Today we moved to physical machine testing, verifying the drivers were installed, and IDing/importing those that got missed out.  Interestingly, the recently released HP all-inclusive driver pack for PCs/laptops is missing quite a few drivers.  We’re finding them in the per-model archives with no issues, as we are for the Dell machines.

One of the nice finds today was that I’d forgot to turn on Multicast on the distribution point and set the network speed in Multicast.  By default it is 100 Mbps.  I switched that sucker up to 1 Gbps.  Two things happened:

  1. All deployments that were on-going broke as the DP was updated.  This wasn’t instant either, taking a couple of minutes.
  2. Damn, OS deployment became so much quicker afterwards, as one would expect.

One of the nasties was a 3G modem “driver” by Ericsson on one of the HP laptops.  I say “driver” because there isn’t the usual collection of files including a .sys and .inf.  Instead, it’s a setup.exe.  Extract that and you get more files and another setup.exe.  Crap!  Maybe it has a silent install.  Maybe if it does we can package it up, and distribute it to a collection based on the model name of the laptop in question.  I’m even wondering if we can make it a conditional step in the task sequence where the condition is based on a ZTIGather model discovery.   It’s the only 3G modem we’ve had like this in about 8 or so laptop models so it sucks that it stands out like a sore thumb.

Error 0x800705AA: Insufficient System Resources During SCCM OSD Task Sequence

I had an interesting week this past week, doing my first production installation of System Center 2012 Configuration Manager in a production environment, with the focus of the project being on operating system and software deployment.  On Friday I had an interesting issue start to flare up while testing on some VMs.  The task sequence was failing during the installation of the operating system image.

The key log to analyse during a task sequence execution is SMSTS.LOG which can be found in WindowsTempSMSTS on the X drive.  You can get access to this log by enabling the command prompt for diagnostics in your boot image (remember to redistribute to your distribution points) and pressing F8 while the boot image is running.  In here I found:

Error 0x800705AA: Insufficient system resources

Damn!  I had to think for a few moments about this one.  Then it hit me.  I develop my reference image using a VM (snapshot right before the sysprep so I can rollback [apply snapshot], tweak and recapture) and I test on VMs before moving onto driver testing on reference hardware.  How were the VMs configured?  Dynamic memory with 512 MB startup memory.  The boot image doesn’t appear to have integration components for DM so  the 512 MB never burst up to the potential maximum memory of 4096 MB.  The boot image requires a minimum of 512 MB.  I guess the boot image needed more RAM than the startup, couldn’t avail of the maximum amount, and failed the task sequence.

The quick fix: I bumped the startup memory to 1024 MB, tested, and everything’s sorted.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2012 Download

Microsoft has released the new 2012 download for the free task sequence based imaging solution for deploying Windows (and it integrates into System Center 2012 Configuration Manager).

Deploy Windows 7, Office 2010 and 365, and Windows Server 2008 R2 with the newly released Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012. MDT is the recommended process and toolset for automating desktop and server deployment. MDT provides you with the following benefits:

  • Unified tools and processes, including a set of guidance, for deploying desktops and servers in a common deployment console.
  • Reduced deployment time and standardized desktop and server images, along with improved security and ongoing configuration management.

Some of the key changes in MDT 2012 are:

  • Comprehensive tools and guidance to efficiently manage large-scale deployments of Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 365.
  • An enhanced user-Driven Installation (UDI) deployment method that utilizes System Center Configuration Manager 2012. UDI lets end users initiate and customize an OS deployment on their PCs—via an easy-to-use wizard.
  • Ease Lite Touch installation through integration with Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT).
  • This release provides support for deploying Windows 8 Consumer Preview in a lab environment.