SCCM 2012 - Collections not evaluating

Had an interesting issue relating to collections that were not evaluating. The hourglass of despair was rolling around on all the collections.

A quick look through the colleval.log and there was an error:

[Auxiliary Evaluator] Error refreshing collection, will retry momentarily [xxxxxxxx, Error 0xb]

xxxxxxxx being the collection ID.

In my case the collection was a direct membership rule that was assignment to an 'x64 unknown computer' on the specified collection. Once I removed the direct membership rules then the collections could be evaluated and populate the collections.

SCCM 2012 - Removing an old Site System

I recently had to remove an old site system (DP) that had been decommissioned.

If you ever get faced with being unable to delete the site system a useful method for removal is listed here:

http://myitforum.com/myitforumwp/2013/01/17/sccm-2012-removing-a-site-system-from-the-console-that-is-no-longer-online/

Worked well for me, especially as I didn't want to wait for the Site Component to pick up the roles I removed as eventually Component Server will get removed.

The error message you receive when deleting is:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The server “\\<server_fqdn>” cannot be deleted because it contains the following site system roles:

Component server
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The registry key to use is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS\Components\SMS_SITE_COMPONENT_MANAGER\Component Servers\[SERVERNAME]

Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit 8.1 - Install Issue

Hit this error recently, attempting to install ADK 8.1 on my Windows 7 SP1 VM:

• Downloaded the source files for installation at a later time - ok success
• Copied the source files including the adksetup.exe to my VM for installation. 

• Run the adksetup.exe (as administrator)
• FAILS with the following in the log file.

"Image path is [\??\C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Deployment Tools\amd64\DISM\wimmount.sys]
Could not acquire privileges; GLE=0x514
Returning status 0x514"

• I had to remove the system from the domain and then run the install as the local administrator. Even logging on as the local admin whilst on the domain did not work. 

Performance Related Hotfixes for Windows 7 SP1

An interesting list of hotfixes that may improve the Windows 7 experience. Haven't been through any of them yet to comment but will update if I find any gems.
List of Performance hotfixes post SP1 for Windows 7 SP1

Check Point Release Security Report 2013

Check Point release 2013 Security Report.

"Based on research of 900 companies and 120,000 hours of monitored traffic, our research reveals startling details of real risks faced by enterprises including: 

• 63% infected with bots
• 91% used applications with potential security risks.
• 54% experienced a data loss incident"

Read report here

HP SSM Integration to CA OSIM/ITCM

I had a problem after the OSIM build where some HP drivers need to be installed manually due to them not being PnP. Coupled with the build process we need to find an easy way to integrate this into ITCM for a regular driver maintenance of drivers/BIOS upgrades/BIOS passwords and settings.
HP provide a free tool called SSM that is based on using a file share and running alongside SDM creates a usefull way to download the latest drivers.

A quick high level process would be:

1) Fire up SDM and download all the required drivers to a shared folder.
2) Update the database stored in the share to register the new drivers
3) From a client system run a script to map a drive and then run the SSM executable with relevant switches
4) Sit back have a pint and watch the missing drivers get installed along with any newer drivers.

The question was can this be added to 3rd party software such as ITCM
Some factors to take into account:

ITCM Software Delivery runs with the system account:
- No network access, so running a script will be tricky.
(Null session share may work)

We don't want to create individual packages for each driver file.
- Overheads on creating packages
- Maybe grouping drivers together and running it that way(?)

We don't want one humongous package with all the drivers.
- Increased build times
- Harder to manage.

(more info when complete)

WINLOAD.EXE Error After deployment of WIM Image - OSIM

After the creation of my 'golden image' I deployed the WIM to a VM and two physical systems. These did not deploy correctly and I faced an error:

Missing or Corrupt winload.exe (0xc000000e)

I know that the script to prepare the C: drive and deploy the WIM had ran so I looked a bit closer at the specific script. The script to deploy the WIM is located in managedpc\camenu\ the particular file we are looking at depends on the image name. %IMAGE%.cmd. I shouldn't replicate the script (as I wouldn't want to break any confidentiality agreements) but the structure is what you would normally expect.

- Connect to a server share
- Format the C drive using format c: /FS:NTFS /X /Q /V:OS /Y
- Use imageX to apply WIM
- Post install tasks etc.

After a bit of digging around on the Internet forums I noticed some people were seeing a similar issue. It looks like the C: drive hasn't been marked set in the BCD Store. A method around this is to use the bcdedit tool which is built into WinPE.

More on the bcdedit.exe located hither:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709667(WS.10).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff542202(v=vs.85).aspx


In order to incorporate this into the script we just need to add the following lines of code to the end of %IMAGE%.cmd (before the :END and GOTO END)

x:\windows\system32\bcdedit /set {default} device partition=c:
x:\windows\system32\bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=c:
x:\windows\system32\bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=c:

Where X: is the WinPE drive.

Reasons behind this are still a little clouded, I'm not wholly sure if this was something relating to my previous blog on the BDEDrive (Bitlocker System Drive) or due to the UEFI as described hither. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface