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Installing Windows is a complex operation that provides an incredibly unique capability—the ability to run a new version of Windows on a vast array of hardware configurations and combinations that were designed with no knowledge of a future Windows, even a version with substantial re-architecture of the Kernel. While most people do not experience the full code path of setup/upgrade (because they buy new PCs and choose to get a new version of Windows that way), even orchestrating the new PC “out of box experience” (OOBE) is a complex technical challenge. Our aim in improving setup is to reduce the time from start to finish so that customers can get to Windows and use the full power of Windows to further customize and ultimately enjoy their new Windows experience. This post was written by Christa St. Pierre on our Setup and Deployment team. –Steven (Note, we’re taking a break for the US Holiday) Setup is something that gets a lot of attention from us in any Windows release. It needs to just work reliably across a huge number of variations of hardware and software. This is true whether you are upgrading your own laptop, or you’re an IT pro who is migrating 10,000 desktops in an enterprise using broad deployment tools. For Windows 7 our main focus was on improving successful install rates, and we did a lot of work to improve reliability and deal with many tough (but relatively rare) cases that had caused problems in setting up earlier versions of Windows. This work gave Windows 7 a more reliable setup experience than in any previous Windows release, as measured by lab testing, customer support incidents, and setup telemetry. For Windows 8, our goal was to continue to improve reliability while also improving the installation experience and raw performance. Not only did we want it to be rock solid, but also faster and easier to use. A big challenge Although millions of people choose to upgrade their existing PCs, most people choose to get a new version of Windows preinstalled on a new PC. In the past that often had to do with increasing system requirements in new Windows releases, and the need to purchase new PCs with more power to run the new version. With Windows 7 however, we made a commitment to work on many more existing PCs by keeping system requirements low and maintaining compatibility. We’ve continued that commitment with Windows 8, so many of you with existing PCs can simply upgrade. Looking just at Windows 7 customers, there are currently more than 450 million PCs that will be able to run Windows 8, but we expect that many systems running Windows Vista and even Windows XP will also be eligible. Support for these PCs running different Windows versions is a big challenge in terms of testing all possible upgrade paths, languages, service packs, architectures, and editions. When you think about it, it is a rather remarkable achievement that hardware designed for one OS can be supported on an OS that did not exist when the hardware was created, especially considering that connecting hardware to software is a fundamental role played by the OS. There are always complexities involving hardware support. Sometimes PCs are equipped with peripherals that require updated drivers for Windows 8, and in other cases, for any number of reasons, a PC maker decides that a particular model or configuration is not supported on a new version of Windows. There are also complexities in getting software to work seamlessly upon upgrade, particularly utilities that hook into the lowest levels of Windows such as anti-virus, disk format and defrag, or virtualization. While we have a massive test and ecosystem effort, ultimately the final say on support on a new version of Windows for a PC, peripheral, or software package is determined by the maker of that product. Our commitment to keeping things running and bringing forward software is industry leading and continues with Windows 8. At one recent team meeting, a member of our team showed Windows 8 running Excel version 3.0, which is the 16-bit version of Excel from 1990! Perceived as “difficult” During planning for Windows 8, we wanted to hear from customers who chose not to upgrade to Windows 7 even though their PCs would run it. In 2010 we commissioned a study of how people make PC purchase decisions, and talked to customers in three global markets to find out more. While the list of reasons as to why a customer chose not to upgrade varied by market, we have received notable feedback that upgrading the PC was perceived as difficult. So even though many customers wanted to upgrade, the current setup experience might be something that just wasn’t easy enough to make them feel confident in doing so. Different customer needs Hearing that some customers think it is too difficult really highlights the fact that we have many different customer needs we need to fulfill with setup. Most customers who buy a Windows upgrade from a retailer just want it to be fast and easy, but a few also want to be able to do some more complex things, such as setting up in a multi-boot configuration. And of course, we also have the IT Pro customers, who need to take full control over configurations, install from network as well as media, and add customizations to the setup image. The advanced user’s needs are a lot like those of the IT Pro, both because they require more fine-tuned control and because it’s hard for us to predict exactly which controls they may want to manipulate. For this reason, we have not created a “super advanced setup” mode, but we encourage people who want to create unattended setup configurations for home or work to use our standalone deployment tools. In Windows 7, we provided a Windows Automated Installation Kit, and in Windows 8 we have enhanced that with additional tools in the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit, which is available for download to MSDN subscribers. For this post, I’ll talk mostly about the interactive GUI setup experiences, since that’s where we have the most changes. We sought to maintain very high backwards compatibility with existing unattended installation configurations that IT Pros or advanced users have spent time on for Windows 7, so you can expect those to work consistently for Windows 8 as well, without having to start over. So rest assured that your custom deployments continue to be fully supported as before. Streamlining the end-to-end experience Leaving aside automated installations and just looking at the typical GUI scenarios, we still wanted to serve two distinct customer groups in the setup user experience: People who want an easy way to upgrade to the new release with an absolute bare minimum of hassle People who want to do a clean install, and want more control of setup options, disk layout, and partition configuration The way we approached these needs was based on the realization that the first group typically runs setup in the UI of their current Windows OS (i.e. they launch it like an app), while the second group typically runs setup from boot media. So, rather than trying to rationalize two fairly different experiences and customer requirements, we chose to maintain two setup user experiences: a streamlined setup that you reach by running an .exe from the DVD or via web delivery, and an advanced setup that runs when you boot off of a DVD or USB key. The streamlined setup is a new experience, optimized for ease-of-use, upgrades, and web delivery via download. Advanced setup is the home of all things familiar to the advanced user, including full support for unattended installation, partition selection, and formatting. Under the covers they share all of the same setup engine components. So both experiences benefitted from our ability to focus on a common codebase for performance and reliability enhancements. Shifting towards web delivery methods Before going into the detail on the user experience changes, there’s one big change that is important to call out. In the past, if you wanted to buy an upgrade for Windows, it involved purchasing a boxed product from a retail outlet, taking it home, (sometimes being infuriated while trying to open the box,) and inserting a DVD. However, buying boxed software is quickly becoming the exception rather than the rule, with more and more software being purchased online as broadband penetration increases and large-size media downloads become more common. While we will continue to offer boxed DVDs, we are also making it easier than ever to purchase and install online. This includes starting the setup experience online as well, and having one continuous integrated experience from beginning to end. There is also one big advantage that is a favorite of mine. With our web setup experience, we actually “pre-key” the setup image that is downloaded to a unique user, which means that you don’t have to type in the 25-digit product key when you install! Streamlining - Reducing repetition and integrating experiences More than 20 million customers downloaded and ran the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor during the first six months of availability. Many customers also ran Windows Easy Transfer during this same time period. A reasonable (and often recommended) installation experience for Windows 7 followed a flow like this: Download and install Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Run Windows Upgrade Advisor Run Windows Easy Transfer to save files and settings Run Windows 7 setup and clean install Run Windows Easy Transfer to restore files and settings This end-to-end experience included 4 different web and client experiences and required the average customer to walk through 60 screens to complete. The primary reason for the high screen count was the repetition of information. We can visualize it something like this: A common Windows 7 installation experience: Upgrade Advisor, Windows Easy Transfer, and Setup In Windows 8, rather than having Upgrade Advisor, Setup, and Windows Easy Transfer as separate apps or features, we’ve folded them together into one fast and fluid experience in which we first determine if your PC, apps, and devices will work in the new OS, note which things you want to keep (apps, files and/or settings), and then install the new OS. We’ve also added the capability for setup to resume automatically after certain actions (such as resolving a blocking compatibility problem), which in the past would have required restarting setup again from the beginning. Here’s what to expect when you launch the new setup experience from the web : Determining compatibility The first thing we do is scan the PC to determine compatibility, resulting in a summary report such as this one: Windows 8 setup compatibility summary It provides information on the apps and devices that will work in Windows 8, those that won’t work, and any other system information that is useful to know when determining whether or not to purchase and install Windows 8. A detailed compatibility report is also available if you want to print or save the information, or desire more detail about what to expect once you get to Windows 8, including which apps or devices will require updates. The compatibility data behind the report covers hundreds of thousands of applications and devices, including retail software, OEM preinstalled software, and peripherals. If an application or device ran on Windows 7, our goals is that it should run on Windows 8 too, but in some cases it may require an update or other support from the OEM or vendor. Some applications also have custom installation logic – installing certain components or settings depending on the OS you’re upgrading from (this is particularly true of system utilities and software that is tightly connected to hardware and peripherals). You may need to uninstall and reinstall these types of apps. (This is also a reason to be careful of 3rd party “app mover” applications, which claim to move apps from one OS to another, as the end result can be unpredictable or broken.) As a reminder, the best drivers for any system are the ones available directly from the PC manufacturer for embedded hardware and from the device manufacturer for peripherals. Detailed compatibility report Downloading Windows 8 Next, an integrated download manager provides time estimates, data validation, the ability to pause, resume, and re-download only parts of the file if something goes wrong. Additionally, because we have already scanned the PC to determine compatibility we know which version of Windows 8 to download – eliminating the need to ask questions such as which language or OS architecture to choose. Downloading the Windows image from the web Continuing with installation or creating bootable media Once the download is complete, you are presented a choice to continue the installation, or install on another partition. The latter option takes you to advanced setup, and allows you to save an ISO or create a bootable USB drive before completing other advanced setup options. (This is the option you’ll need to choose if you want to dual boot, for example.) Creating bootable media from web-based setup Choosing what to keep Next is the upgrade choice. You can choose to keep all, some, or none of your personal data depending on the OS you’re upgrading from, and your personal preferences. Windows 8 setup options for upgrade and migration The “Windows settings, personal files, and apps” option is akin to the existing “upgrade” option in Windows 7 and Windows Vista, where an in-place upgrade is performed over the current OS, retaining the apps that were previously installed as well as settings and user files on disk. The “Just personal files” option is a new functionality, which allows you to get a clean install, but still keep your data without a separate tool such as Windows Easy Transfer. read the rest here > http://blogs.msdn.co...experience.aspx

that's not possible for SCCM 2007 to SCCM 2012, it has to be side by side when migrating to SCCM 2012.

remove the cd key (if specified) in the apply operating system step, does it work then ?

where are you getting that error exactly ?

yep, read it again - http://www.windows-n...-windows-7-x64/ see the bit's in blue below in other words, get your ISO (or dvd) and extract the contents of that ISO to your chosen share so that every file and folder that's on the DVD/iso will be on the share.

looks like you created the operating system installer package incorrectly, so check the guide again, it tells you exactly how to create it cheers niall

ok and have you uinstalled the WDS role (from server manager),. and then uninstalled the DP role (from within Configmgr) and then rebooted, then added back the DP role ?

unisntall the wds service, uninstall the DP role, reboot server, reinstall the distrubution point role, wait 10 minutes, see if the WDS service has started

nope, they should not be that way, only in a lab if you WANT it that way, but i'd recommend you keep them separate. so are you saying that you do have AD setup currently, is that working ok ? is DNS ok, from your sccm server open a command prompt and type nslookup, what does it return, you can include a screenshot

did you distribute both boot images to the dps ? did you check if the windows deployment services service is started ?

currently you can only deploy one task sequence, so.... thinking like that you can have multiple os's in one task sequence, just make the ts bigger, and have a frontend hta or similar to decide was os you are installing.

and make sure you've got your site assigned in the boundary group, check Heirarchy Configuration, Boundary Groups, and click on the references tab, is your site assigned ?

Before the Internet, updates such as service packs and "patches" were impossibly hard to come by. You ordered upgrade "media" or maybe bought a magazine with a CD in it. Of course, the Internet changed all that. In fact, when ftp.microsoft.com was first set up, among the first services was the ability to get updates for MS-DOS and Windows. With the introduction of Windows Update, we invested heavily in building not just a software delivery service, but a commitment to delivering high quality updates in a timely manner. It took some time to get to the point where customers trust these automatic updates, and we're proud of how far we've come. Today Windows Update is one of the largest services on the Internet by several measures, and of course we're using Windows 8 development as a chance to improve the experience of product updates too. This post was authored by Farzana Rahman, the group program manager of our Windows Update group. –Steven When it comes to Windows Update, one of the most discussed topics is the disruptiveness of restarts in the course of automatic updating. And for good reason—restarts can interrupt you right in the middle of something important. The obvious question to ask first is why does the installation of updates even require a restart at all? Ideally, we would like all update installations to happen seamlessly in the background without a restart. But, in reality, there are situations where the installer is not able to update files because they are in use. In these cases, we need to restart your machine to complete the installation. The automatic updating experience thus needs to be able to handle cases where restarts are required. We know this architectural challenge is one that frustrates administrators and end-users alike, but it does represent the state of the art for Windows. It is important to understand that for many updates, even if you could continue running the existing code that is already in memory, it is that very code that is a security vulnerability (for example), so the risk to the security (or reliability) of the machine would remain until you restart your machine. We'll keep working on this one. In the meantime, applications that support the Windows Restart Manager (introduced in Windows Vista) can return you to precisely where you left off after a restart. In this blog, I want to talk about some of the improvements we are making to the automatic updating experience in Windows 8, which will make restarts a little less annoying. First, some facts about Windows Update Windows Update (or WU, as we like to say within the team) currently updates over 350 million PCs running Windows 7 and over 800 million PCs across all the supported Windows platforms. There are actually many more PCs updated by WU indirectly if you account for our Windows Software Update Server, and for those machines (or customers) that do all updates manually for any number of reasons. Since its genesis over a decade ago, the Windows Update experience has evolved quite a bit to adapt to a changing ecosystem, especially the changing requirements around security. And Windows Update has been quite successful in updating PCs in time to stay ahead of large-scale exploits against Windows. Since the introduction of automatic updating, we have constantly worked to tighten the time it takes to distribute new updates to everyone who uses WU. The chart below (figure 1) shows us how fast downloads and installations occur on Windows 7, from the time of release of an update. The speed of each download is primarily determined by the internet connectivity of the PC, something that WU has no control over, so it is interesting to see below that the majority of update activity occurs in the first three days after release. This three-day number is a key one that I will come back to when we talk about improvements in Windows 8. In one week, 90% of users worldwide who need the update have successfully completed installation, including the restart, with the number of installations pretty much flattening out after that. Figure 1 – Completed download and installation of updates from time of release of update The balance of how broadly and how quickly we can update has proven beneficial to our users to the point where updating is mainly viewed as a background maintenance task (and justly so!) with nearly 90% of users choosing to update automatically on Windows 7. That’s 90% of the total user base telling us to automatically install updates without showing any notifications, or asking for confirmation. Windows 7 Automatically install updates 89.30% Notify me before install 2.38% Notify me before download 3.44% Never check for updates 4.88% Figure 2 – Usage of various modes of automatic updating Automatic updating and restarts on Windows 7 The next logical question to ask is what is the install experience for people who have chosen to automatically install updates? Below, data collected anonymously from WU gives an insight into the various modes of installation for those who have chosen to install automatically. As you see above, there are 3 main categories of automatic update installations. Here is what we learned from analyzing each category. Install-at-shutdown – The majority of automatic update users (39%) are updating when they shut down their systems. For these users, there is no automatic restart because the system can complete all steps of the installation during shutdown. This is the least disruptive experience for users, and so we do want to “hitch a ride” whenever we can on user-initiated shutdowns instead of inconveniencing users with a separate restart. Install-at-scheduled-time - For the 30% who are scheduling automatic updates, their installations start at a scheduled time (the default is 3 AM in the time-zone where the PC is located) or the next time the user logs in (if we miss the 3 AM window). WU automatically completes any restarts necessary to finish the installation. To ensure that you get the chance to save any important files and data before the restart, we show you a 15-minute countdown timer before the restart. A fifteen-minute countdown timer warns you of the restart Allowing restarts to occur without user interaction has helped us to rapidly update a major portion of the Windows ecosystem with critical updates. On average, within a week of releasing a critical update, 90% of PCs have installed the update (see Figure1). On the other hand, this behavior of automatic restarts has some unintended consequences for the user. Restarts can occur without notice, and might occur monthly or even more often if there is an out-of-band update. This unpredictability can potentially result in loss of user data. Most of our automatic installs and the subsequent restarts happen at 3 AM, when users are not around to save any important work. We have heard a lot of painful stories of users coming back to their PCs in the morning to find that a restart occurred, and that some important data was lost. In other cases, the user doesn’t lose data, but needs to restart a job that they were in the middle of (for example, a long copy job). Interactive install - We were surprised to see 31% of users interactively installing updates; of these 31%, approximately 20% have selected to automatically install, but they manually intervene anyway. WU provides a pop-up notification telling you when updates are available if you have selected to automatically install. The notifications are clearly capturing people’s attention, so they click on the notification and interactively install the updates. But this is actually reinforcing an unintended behavior. If you signed up to get automatic updates, you really shouldn’t need to bother interactively installing an update every time one is available. Most installs should occur silently in the background, and WU should notify you only for critical actions (for example, a pending restart). This also matches feedback from customers, who tell us they find the constant notifications to be distracting. Their expectation when they choose automatic updating is that updating will occur automatically. This seems to be a case where making sure people are in control of their PC experience actually resulted in too much information, and ultimately the price of being in control was a feeling of a loss of control. With these lessons learned, we set about defining a better automatic updating and restart experience for Windows 8. Solving the challenge around updating and restarts The question for us on the WU team is always “What is the best way to quickly update the PC while not being intrusive to the user?” Turns out, this is a hard question to answer, and there is no one simple answer. The challenge we faced was to find the balance between updating with speed and giving notice to the user for upcoming restarts. Clearly, updating and securing the PC before vulnerabilities can be exploited is just as important as it ever was. However, we also want to deliver a better experience around handling restarts and avoiding data loss without compromising our goal of timely updating. To this end, the guiding principles we used to design the experience were The automatic updating experience is not intrusive to users but keeps them aware of critical actions Minimize restarts and make them more predictable Continue to keep the PC and the ecosystem up-to-date and secure in a timely manner Windows Update and handling restarts on Windows 8 Based on these principles, we made the following improvements to the Windows 8 updating experience. more > http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/11/14/minimizing-restarts-after-automatic-updating-in-windows-update.aspx

i don't have any so cannot test them, feel free to send some my way and i'll test them

that part is already done, what i meant was it was the next part (after the one you had just read) in the series - check it out here

the next part of this series covers this in detail

up to you, normally i'd recommend you keep FAT applications in your build and capture, and deploy everything else in the Deploy Task sequence, but this is just a lab so do whatver you want !

the UDA variables are used to set who the Primary User(s) are for this device, useful for targetting software to computers later... USMT is for migrating users data, we'll come back to that later

cancel out of the wizard, then try again, if it's still not working, reboot the server then try again

software update syncs are carried out by the schedule (check software update point in component services), check the Sync Schedule tab, however that is out of scope of THIS part, so please post those questions separately or on the relevant part, cheers !

In Part 1 of this series we got our AD and SCCM servers ready, and then we installed System Center 2012 Configuration Manager as a standalone Primary site. In Part 2 we configured the SCCM server further by adding some Windows Server roles necessary for the following Configuration Manager 2012 functionality, Software Update Point (SUP) and Operating System Deployment. In Part 3 we configured the server further by Enabling Discovery methods and creating Boundary's and Boundary Groups. In Part 4 we configured Client Settings, Added roles and Distributed the Configmgr Client to our Computers within the LAB, then in Part 5 we enabled the Endpoint Protection Role and configured Endpoint Protection settings and targeted a collection called All Windows 7 Computers with these settings and policies. In Part 6 we configured our SUP further to Deploy software updates to our All Windows 7 Computers and Build Windows 7 X64 collections. In Part 7 we used the Build and Capture process to create our Base Windows 7 X64 wim image. In Part 8 we created a USMT 4 package to migrate the users data using hardlinking and then we imported the captured image into ConfigMgr and created a Deploy Windows 7 X64 task sequence. We created a Deploy Windows 7 X64 Collection and set some User Device Affinity collection variables. In Part 9 we created an Application, and created a deployment type for that application to only install if the Primary User was True for that device (User Device Affinity), we then copied our Task Sequence (duplicated it), deployed the new Task Sequence, added a computer to the new collection and then PXE booted the computer to the Deployment Menu. In Part 10 we monitored the Deployment process in a lot of detail to how UDA sent state messages and we verified that our application installed on the users Primary Device, in addition we modified our collection variables, and added a prestart command to our boot image to prompt for the SMSTSUdaUsers. Now we will setup the Reporting Services Point Role and verify that reporting is working. Reporting in Configuration Manager:- The following reporting features are new or have changed in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. The reporting point has been deprecated The Reporting Services point is the only site system role used for reporting in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager. For more information about the Reporting Services point, see the Reporting Services Point section later in this topic. Full integration of the Configuration Manager 2007 R2 SQL Server Reporting Services solution In addition to standard report management, Configuration Manager 2007 R2 introduced support for SQL Server Reporting Services reporting. System Center 2012 Configuration Manager has integrated the Reporting Services solution, added new functionality, and removed standard report management as a reporting solution. For more information about Reporting Services, see the SQL Server Reporting Services section later in this topic. Report Builder 2.0 integration System Center 2012 Configuration Manager uses Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 as the exclusive authoring and editing tool for both Model and SQL-based reports. Report Builder 2.0 is automatically installed when you create or modify a report for the first time. For more information about Report Builder, see the Report Builder section later in this topic. Subscription management Report subscriptions in SQL Reporting Services enable you to configure the automatic delivery of specified reports by e-mail or to a file share at scheduled intervals. Running reports You can run System Center 2012 Configuration Manager reports in the Configuration Manager console by using Report Viewer or you can run reports from a browser by using Report Manager. Each method for running reports provides a similar experience. Localized reporting Reports in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager are rendered in the locale of the installed Configuration Manager console. Subscriptions are rendered in the locale that SQL Server Reporting Services is installed. When you author a report, you can specify the assembly and expression. Reporting in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager provides a set of tools and resources that help you use the advanced reporting capabilities of SQL Server Reporting Services and the rich authoring experience that Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 provides. Reporting helps you to gather, organize, and present information about users, hardware and software inventory, software updates, applications, site status, and other Configuration Manager operations in your organization. Reporting provides you with a number of predefined reports that you can use as is or that you can modify to meet your needs, or you can create custom reports. The following topics on Technet help you to manage reporting in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager: Introduction to Reporting in Configuration Manager Planning for Reporting in Configuration Manager Configuring Reporting in Configuration Manager Operations and Maintenance for Reporting in Configuration Manager Security and Privacy for Reporting in Configuration Manager Technical Reference for Reporting in Configuration Manager Step 1. Install the Reporting Services Point Role Perform the following on your SCCM 2012 server as SMSadmin. In the ConfigMgr console, click on Administration, Site Configuration, Servers and Site System Roles, right click on our server and choose Add Site System Roles when the Add site system roles wizard appears click next and select Reporting Services Point from the list of available choices you'll be asked to specify some Reporting Services settings, click on Verify beside database name if all goes well it will be listed as Successfully Verified, now we need to configure a Reporting Services Point Account, and we will use the Active Directory User (called ReportsUser) which we created in Part 1 of this series in Active Directory Users and Computers. * ReportsUser, a domain user for reporting services. so for User Name click on the Set drop down menu and select New Account when prompted for Windows User Account, enter the credentials of your ReportsUser account, you can use Browse to easily find the user in Active Directory. The specified Windows user account and password is encrypted and stored in the Reporting Services database. Note: Reporting Services retrieves the data for reports from the site database using this account and password. Tip: When installing the Reporting Service Point role, you do not have the ability to 'verify' the Reports user you specify, so the user may not even exist in AD. Therefore, you should browse AD when searching for the user. click next to install Reporting Services click next at the summary and review the completion screen. Tip: you can verify that the role installs successfully by monitoring the SMS_SRS_REPORTING_POINT log in Component Status, Monitoring. Look for Message ID 1015 which indicates that the Reporting Services point was successfully installed. In addition you can verify by checking the following Log on your server, SRSRP.LOG located in D:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\Logs, look for a line which reads You should also inspect the SRSRPSetup.log file for the following line, Installation was Successful. Step 2. Configure Reporting Perform the following on your SCCM 2012 server as SMSadmin. Now that the Reporting Services Point role is installed we need to do some configuration before we can view reports. In the Monitoring Space of ConfigMgr console click on Reports it will list 0 items. On your ConfigMgr server, click on the start menu and right click on Internet Explorer, choose Run As Administrator, answer Yes to the UAC prompt. enter the following URL http://sccm.server20...b.local/Reports obviously replace your server FQDN in the URL. click on the Properties Tab followed by New Role Assignment In Group or Username enter Server2008R2ReportsUser and give the user the permissions you want now we can see that the ReportsUser has all reporting roles, and as this is a LAB we should verify that SMSadmin has the rights to do everything, select the SMSadmin user and choose Edit, click the Role checkbox so that we get all roles, and then click Apply, after editing both users we want them to have all permissions for Reporting services, Tip: This is a LAB so it's ok to configure Reporting this way, in production you would want to be more specific about what permissions users are granted. exit from Internet Explorer, and browse Reports within ConfigMgr again, the Reports are listed and ready to be used, note that they are sorted by Category (and also below Reports are Category Folders) Step 3. Viewing some Reports Perform the following on your SCCM 2012 server as SMSadmin. In the ConfigMgr console, expand reports, Select the All Collections report, right click it, choose Run, a list of collections appears in the Report Viewer, you can drill down further into the report by clicking on All Systems on one of your Windows 7 Client Computers, login as ReportsUser and start Internet Explorer, browse to http:\sccm.server2008r2.lab.localreports and select a report from the ConfigMgr_P01 database Tip: if the ConfigMgr_P01 database doesn't appear as a temporary measure you can add the ReportsUser to the Local Administrators group on your SCCM server, that's ok in a LAB, in production you'll want to configure your security accordingly and create Groups for Report Readers and Report Administrators. Thats it ! Reporting Services Point is installed and in our next part we will look at our Endpoint Protection reports and monitor it real time both on the Server and Clients.

can you post the SMSPXE.log please

well what issues are you having specifically ? if you think in terms of refresh the only barrier is the encrypted drive, if you unlock the drive and suspend encryption on it then the rest of the refresh is as per normal (hardlinking and so on), the challenge is do you 1. disable the encryption in Windows (most people do this prior to rebooting into WinPE and doing the remaining tasks) 2. disable it if found in WinPE - this is where you have to get creative as the task sequence wants to write to the largest available NTFS drive at boot time... we did solve is though with some clever diskpart commands to reassign the drives followed by a reboot.

because you want your computer(s) installed with applications dynamically as part of the operating system installation, or your just want a task sequence to dynamically install a list of applications in a set order on computers,