anyweb

Summary: This morning, Microsoft officially took the wraps off of Windows 8, unveiling its radically revised new operating system in front af an audience of software developers. I had a chance to get my hands on the new system (literally) last night. Here’s what you can look forward to. If you think you know what to expect from Windows 8, just wait till you get your hands on it. I stayed up far too late last night, experimenting with the developer preview build that Microsoft will show off to the public for the first time today. I wanted to get a good night’s sleep, but I literally couldn’t keep my hands off the sleek Windows 8-powered tablet that I have on loan for the rest of this week. Screenshots: First look at Windows 8 The new OS has more than its share of rough edges, and the new “modern shell” is disorienting—at least initially. And Windows boss Steven Sinofsky took great pains to stress that this is not a launch but rather the initial availability of the platform for developers. Still, after a few hours of increasingly addictive hands-on experience, I am convinced that this new release will indeed be a very big deal. Although you can use Windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard, it’s at its best on a touchscreen-equipped tablet like the one I tested. The form factor is thin, but this compact PC is no lightweight; there’s a fully loaded PC under the hood, with an i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, and a speedy solid-state drive. With a screen resolution of 1366 by 768, it’s capable of playing high-definition videos and meets the minimum spec to arrange two of the new Metro-style apps side-by-side. The Windows 8 difference is obvious from the moment you boot it up. As part of the setup process, I configured the system to use my Windows Live ID and password as the login, which automatically picked up my picture for the user tile on the Start page. Choosing this configuration also allows you to sync your personalized settings to the cloud so they can roam with you as you switch between devices. Getting around in the new shell via a touchscreen device tablet requires mastering a few gestures: Swipe in from the right side of the screen to display the vertical strip of “charms” (that’s the official name) shown here. The five icons replace the Windows Start menu and allow quick access to commonly used functions. A Windows button in the center returns to the Start screen (mimicking the action of the equivalent hardware key with the Windows logo on it). While the charms column is visible, the main screen also shows the date and time and provides quick visual indicators for battery life, WiFi status, and other useful details. Metro-style apps are borderless and occupy the full screen. If your display has a resolution of 1366 by 768 or better, you can snap a Metro-style app into a skinny strip along the side, with another one occupying the remainder of the screen. Ironically, the feature that gave the operating system its name is gone for new Metro-style apps—there’s no option for overlapping windows except on the traditional desktop. When a Metro-style app is running, you can swipe up from the bottom or down from the top to display commands that are available for that app, as shown here. This behavior provides uniform access to app-specific commands and options for any program written to use the new Metro style. read the whole story over at Zdnet > http://www.zdnet.com...nt;feature-roto

did you close and then reopen the console after the upgrade ?

don't worry about it !

in configmgr console click on Monitoring, expand it out so you can see system status/component status logs green=good, red=bad

create a software update group, and delete the updates from the software update group by selecting an update in the Software Update Group and right click, choose Edit Membership, you can then remove it from the Software Update Group (or groups if it's in more than one) by deselecting each group, you can't delete them from All Software Updates, that's just a list of all available software updates

thanks ! they do take time to put together so I appreciate that

In Part 1. of this series we Installed SCCM 2012, in Part 2 we started to configure it. In Part 3, we configured Beta 2 some more by enabling Active Directory discovery methods, adding some site system roles, configuring the computer client agent and client push settings and finally doing a manual client installation to verify it all worked, in Part 4 we looked at installing an application using Application Management and the Software Catalog and the Software Center features of SCCM 2012, and in Part 5, we added the FSP, SLP, SMP, SUP. In Part 6 we got our SCCM 2012 server ready for Deploying Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 so that we could start deploying some Windows 7 clients to enhance our LAB, then in Part 7 we created a Build and Capture Task Sequence and deployed it to our Build and Capture collection. In Part 8 we created our Network Access Account and captured our Windows 7 SP1 image (and Windows 7 RTM). We deployed that captured image to a new Virtual Machine in Part 9 by importing our captured images, creating a new Deploy Task Sequence and then Deployed Windows 7. In Part 10 we Synchronized Software Updates and verified that they were synchronising using logs. Technet Recommended Reading: Operations and Maintenance for Software Updates in Configuration Manager - http://technet.micro....aspx#SUMDeploy Step 1 . Specify Search Criteria for Software Updates In the console, click Software Library, expand it and select All Software Updates then click on Add Criteria in the top right of the search field. In the scrollable Add Criteria menu, select the following options Bulletin ID Expired Superseded Product then define the criteria using the drop down menus beside each option so that they look like so click on Search to search for updates that match your specified criteria, It will filter down your results like so (previously there were over 25000 items now we are down to 145 items) let's save our Search criteria and call it Windows 7 Updates search criteria, you can return to this search later by clicking on saved searches and selecting your search from the list. Step 2. Create a Software Update Group that Contains the Software Updates Note: Normally you'd want to look through all these updates and filter out (delete) the ones that are not applicable to you, such as Beta or Service Packs, Delete these from your list before continuing. Now that we've trimmed down out updates we'll select the remaining updates by selecting all the updates found in our search criteria above by clicking on one update and then pressing CTRL + A, it should say 145 items selected in the bottom left corner In the ribbon, click on Home and then in the Update group click on Create Software Update Group, call it Windows 7 Updates and click on Create Now you can click on Software Update Groups in the console and you'll see your newly created Software Update Group, right click on it and choose Show Members to see the updates in this group. Our updates contained in the Software Update Group are listed Step 3. Deploy the Software Update Group We could download the Content for the Software Update Group to verify that it's available before distributing it to our Distribution Points, but we'll skip that step and go ahead and deploy our Updates. Before Doing so let's create a new Collection, so click on Assets and Complicance in the console,click on Device Collections and in the ribbon click on Create Device Collection. Call the collection All Windows 7 computers and limit it to All Systems click next, choose Query Rule from the drop down menu and fill in a Query like so (edit query statement, criteria, show query language and replace the code with the below) select * from SMS_R_System where SMS_R_System.OperatingSystemNameandVersion like "%Workstation 6.1%" click next, next, close. You can click on that collection now and look at it's members. In the console select Software Library and then Software Update Groups. We've already created our Software Update Group above so let's deploy it, select the Software Update Group and in the Ribbon click on Deploy. give the Deployment a name and suitable description, click on Browse beside collection and choose our newly created Windows 7 Computers collection We want the updates to be mandatory so select Required click next through the wizard until you get to Deployment Package, create a new deployment package, Note: Make sure that \\vnext\sources\updates\windows7 (or whatever path you choose) exists otherwise the wizard will fail below when it tries to Download as the Network Path won't exist select our distribution points (vnext) select The Internet as our download location click next until you get to the Summary, and on the summary screen if you want to save this template (and you do for later use) click on Save Template, call it Windows 7 updates Template click save, next and now the downloading starts...(time for coffee anyone ?) TIP: To review the progress of this task, while you are waiting for the wizard to complete you can browse the UNC on your server of your Deployment Package to see that it's actually filling up with updates, you should see something like this And that's it !, after you complete the wizard the software updates in the software update group are deployed to clients in the target collection. In the next part we'll verify that the clients are indeed getting the updates. cheers niall

so to recap you are logged on as a local administrator of this server and the computer account has been added to the local administrators group ? did you log off and log on again before retrying ?

scanstate works fine see here > Successfully complete the action (do X86 scanstate) with the exit win32 code 0 after that it trys to apply the operating system (are you sure the OS wim image is correct ?) <![LOG[Not a data image]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="ApplyOperatingSystem" context="" type="0" thread="408" file="applyos.cpp:320"> <![LOG[ApplyOSRetry: ]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="ApplyOperatingSystem" context="" type="0" thread="408" file="applyos.cpp:331"> <![LOG[TSLaunchMode: UFD]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="ApplyOperatingSystem" context="" type="0" thread="408" file="applyos.cpp:332"> <![LOG[OSDUseAlreadyDeployedImage: FALSE]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="ApplyOperatingSystem" context="" type="0" thread="408" file="applyos.cpp:333"> <![LOG[Rebooting and retrying]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="ApplyOperatingSystem" context="" type="0" thread="408" file="applyos.cpp:345"> <![LOG[Process completed with exit code 0]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="commandline.cpp:1102"> <![LOG[!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------!]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.844+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="instruction.cxx:3010"> <![LOG[successfully complete the action (Apply Operating System) with the exit win32 code 0 and that appears to complete ok, it then claims it needs to retry (possibly due to bad image ?) <![LOG[The action (Apply Operating System) requested a retry]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.954+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="engine.cxx:263"> <![LOG[Reboot to WinPE]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.954+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="engine.cxx:453"> <![LOG[Calling RebootSystem()]LOG] [staging boot image DOT00001]LOG]!><time="16:11:14.954+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="bootimage.cpp:672"> <![LOG[0, HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\framework\tscore\encryptablevolume.cpp,368)]LOG]!><time="16:11:15.344+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="0" thread="1708" file="encryptablevolume.cpp:368"> <![LOG[Checking to see if the data path is on a bootable volume]LOG]!><time="16:11:15.344+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="bootimage.cpp:939"> <![LOG[buffer was too small to get disk layout. Trying again with 1248 bytes]LOG]!><time="16:11:15.344+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="1" thread="1708" file="diskutils.cpp:1269"> <![LOG[0, HRESULT=80004005 (e:\nts_sms_fre\sms\framework\tscore\encryptablevolume.cpp,368)]LOG]!><time="16:11:15.359+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="0" thread="1708" file="encryptablevolume.cpp:368"> <![LOG[boot Image not found in local data cache. Staging is required then it claims the boot image is not found (you are using multicasting here it seems also ?) <![LOG[Boot Image package not found. Unspecified error (Error: 80004005; Source: Windows)]LOG]!><time="16:13:15.386+240" date="09-09-2011" component="TSManager" context="" type="3" thread="1708" file="bootimage.cpp:1002"> so is the boot image distibuted to both dps ? is your image wim a valid captured OS ?

is the server's computer account in the local administrators group?

In Part 1. of this series we Installed SCCM 2012, in Part 2 we started to configure it. In Part 3, we configured Beta 2 some more by enabling Active Directory discovery methods, adding some site system roles, configuring the computer client agent and client push settings and finally doing a manual client installation to verify it all worked, in Part 4 we looked at installing an application using Application Management and the Software Catalog and the Software Center features of SCCM 2012, and in Part 5, we added the FSP, SLP, SMP, SUP. In Part 6 we got our SCCM 2012 server ready for Deploying Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 so that we could start deploying some Windows 7 clients to enhance our LAB, then in Part 7 we created a Build and Capture Task Sequence and deployed it to our Build and Capture collection. In Part 8 we created our Network Access Account and captured our Windows 7 SP1 image (and Windows 7 RTM). We deployed that captured image to a new Virtual Machine in Part 9 by importing our captured images, creating a new Deploy Task Sequence and then Deployed Windows 7. Now we will Synchronize Software Updates and verify that they are synchronising using logs. Note: I will assume you have internet access in your lab, if not you'll need to set that up. In addition you must have completed Part 5 where we installed the Windows Server 2008 WSUS role and we installed the SUP role in Configmgr. Technet recommended reading: Introduction to Software Updates - http://technet.micro...y/gg682168.aspx Planning for Software Updates in Configuration Manager - http://technet.micro...y/gg712696.aspx Prerequisites for Software Updates in Configuration Manager - http://technet.micro...y/hh237372.aspx Configuring Software Updates in Configuration Manager - http://technet.micro...y/gg712312.aspx Step 1. Trigger a Software Updates Synchronization. In the Wunderbar click on Software Library, then select Software Updates, right click on All Software Updates and choose Synchronise Software Updates. You will be prompted about the action, answer Yes. Step 2. Monitor it's progress. Monitoring the progress using the Wsyncmgr.log file. Using windows explorer, open the wsyncmgr.log file located in D:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\Logs in Trace64. You should see the sync is starting with the following line in the Log, Performing Sync on local request. If your internet connection is slow like in my lab this will take 10 or more minutes to fully sync, so go ahead and have a cup of coffee or stretch your legs. If you want to monitor the entire process you can view this log in Trace and you'll see it progressing along, if it fails, try and force the sync again. Monitoring the Process using the SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER component status log. You can also follow the progress of the sync by monitoring a component status log called SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER. To find this, click on Monitoring, System Status, Component Status and locate the log. Right click the log, choose Show Messages, Choose All. look for WSUS Synchronization Started At this point lets go back to our Trace log and see how it's progressing, As we can see it's progressing nicely and currently syncing with the site database, after some more time we get even further into the sync process (79% done) here you can see some updates getting removed because they are expired or superseded (you probably won't see this unless you've done a successful sync before) and finally the sync is done ! In our Status Component Log (SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER) we see the following (Refresh by pressing F5), look for the line WSUS Synchronization done Step 3. Review the new updates In the Configuration Manager console, click on Software Library, then select Software Updates, click on All Software Updates, click on Bulletin ID and sort by Bulletin Id. You should see something like this In the next part we will Deploy Software Updates to our Windows 7 Clients.

are you clicking on NewWebservice in IIS ? yes you can post images here using the Image icon when you post

Summary: Windows 8 client — and not just server — will include Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor in some still unspecified SKU/SKUs, Microsoft officials publicly acknowledged in a new “Building Windows 8″ blog post. As those dissecting leaked Windows 8 leaked builds discovered months ago, Microsoft’s hypervisor is part of Windows 8 client, and not just server. On September 7, Microsoft acknowledged this fact officially in a new post to the “Building Windows 8″ blog. As the new Microsoft post on Hyper-V in Windows 8 client notes, Microsoft’s licensing rules around its HyperV are not changing just because the technology will be available on PCs. “You will still need to license any operating systems you use in the VMs,” the post author Hyper-V Program Manager Mathew John, noted. The new post also does not specify which of the coming Windows 8 client SKUs will include Hyper-V. In June, WindowsNow.com blogger Robert McLaws discovered that there was a so-called “Hyper-V 3.0 “in the Windows 8 client code base. McLaws said the new Hyper-V includes a number of new storage, memory and networking enhancements. It includes support for a new .VHDX virtual hard-drvie format, he added, as well as support for more than four cores. Back in 2009, a French Microsoft Security and Technical Director outlined a scenario allegedly being considered for Windows 8, via which almost all applications would run virtually, via a combination of Hyper-V V3, App-V application virtualization technology and MED-V desktop virtualization functionality. Building Hyper-V into the Windows 8 client could give Microsoft a way to support legacy Windows applications despite changes in Windows 8’s underlying architecture. In today’s post, John didn’t address that scenario. Instead, he explained the purpose of Hyper-V in the client this way: “With Hyper-V, developers and IT professionals can now build a more efficient and cost-effective environment for using and testing across multiple machines.” Microsoft officials showed this past summer a sneak peek of the new Hyper-V technology in Windows Server 8 (that presumably is the same as what’s in the Windows 8 client. The Hyper-V Replica technology in Windows Server 8 will support workloads on more than 16 virtualized processors, Microsoft officials said. via Zdnet > http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/hyper-v-to-be-in-windows-8-client-microsoft-acknowledges-officially/10559?tag=content;feature-roto

Are you the sort of person who prefers to shut your PC down at the end of the day rather than hibernate it or put it to sleep, but do you still want the system to start up fast? Windows 8 has a new feature that will be of great interest to you. The feature is called ‘fast startup mode’ and it is a hybrid between a standard cold boot and restoring your PC from a hibernated state. How does it work? Gabe Aul, director of program management in Windows, explains over on the Building Windows 8 blog: The key thing to remember though is that in a traditional shutdown, we close all of the user sessions, and in the kernel session we close services and devices to prepare for a complete shutdown. Now here’s the key difference for Windows 8: as in Windows 7, we close the user sessions, but instead of closing the kernel session, we hibernate it. Compared to a full hibernate, which includes a lot of memory pages in use by apps, session 0 hibernation data is much smaller, which takes substantially less time to write to disk. If you’re not familiar with hibernation, we’re effectively saving the system state and memory contents to a file on disk (hiberfil.sys) and then reading that back in on resume and restoring contents back to memory. Using this technique with boot gives us a significant advantage for boot times, since reading the hiberfile in and reinitializing drivers is much faster on most systems (30-70% faster on most systems we’ve tested). How much faster is this than a standard cold boot? Take a look at this: Here’s how fast startup is different to a traditional cold boot: The speed of the handoff between POST and Windows depends on whether the system has a traditional BIOS or the newer Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) … so watch out for the sales pitch for new systems: One thing you’ll notice in the video was how fast the POST handoff to Windows occurred. Systems that are built using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) are more likely to achieve very fast pre-boot times when compared to those with traditional BIOS. This isn’t because UEFI is inherently faster, but because UEFI writers starting from scratch are more able to optimize their implementation rather than building upon a BIOS implementation that may be many years old. The good news is that most system and motherboard manufacturers have begun to implement UEFI, so these kinds of fast startup times will be more prevalent for new systems. more via Zdnet > http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/windows-8-to-feature-fast-startup-mode/14640?tag=content;feature-roto

the file referenced is nothing to do with any physical path on your server, are you sure your machine account SERVER$ has local admin rights on this computer, and that you are doing this as local administrator (user) ?

yes

hi Niall (great name !) please do share how you sorted it so others can benefit and learn cheers niall

if you review the Status component logs on your Configmgr server, does anything look wrong ?

sort them by status so that you get a better overview of what is not working and what is, can you post that screenshot ?

we are doing this in WinPE Nico hence the methods above have a read from Technet below:- http://technet.micro...y/bb632526.aspx and http://technet.micro...y/bb680745.aspx

If you are using MDOP and BitLocker then you are more than likely aware of MBAM. Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) is a tool used amongst other things, for storing the BitLocker keys used in your Enterprise. This means that you can have a central repository for your MBAM client agents to talk to, and they do this via Group Policy settings. To make things simple, once your computers are BitLocker protected and have the MBAM client agent installed, and the MBAM Group Policy settings are pointing to your MBAM server, then the info (recovery key etc) will make their way up to the MBAM database. This means that we can use a script in Windows PE to connect to the SQL server and pull the needed information, why ? well during a Refresh (reinstallation of Windows) on your BitLockered computers, you need to unlock the BitLockered drive and then suspend it (so that you can read/write) and to do so you need to provide the recovery key. To get this key we make a connection to the SQL database on the MBAM server and request the information. Note: you'll need the ADO connector added to your boot image in order to make a connection in Windows PE to your SQL server, to do that, create a MDT boot image as described here and make sure 'ADO' is selected otherwise you'll get ADODB.connection errors in WinPE. First of all you'll need a script, let's call it Get_RecoveryKey_from_MBAM.wsf, place the script in a sub directory of your scripts dir in your MDT Toolkit Files package <job id="GetBitLockerKey"> <script language="VBScript" src="..\ZTIUtility.vbs"/> <script language="VBScript" src="..\ZTIDataAccess.vbs"/> <script language="VBScript"> Dim ConString Dim RsTemp Dim MachineID Dim RecoveryKey Dim oEnv Set oEnv=CreateObject("Microsoft.SMS.TSEnvironment") Set WShell=CreateObject("WScript.Shell") Set fso=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Wshell.Run "%comspec% /C manage-bde.exe -protectors -get d: > x:\BLInfo.txt",1,true Set InfoFile=fso.OpenTextFile("x:\BLInfo.txt") Do While Not InfoFile.AtEndOfStream Filerow=InfoFile.ReadLine If InStr(FileRow,"Password")<>0 Then'And InStr(FileRow,"Numerical Password")=0 Password=InfoFile.ReadLine ' msgbox "Numerical Password:" &Password Exit Do End If Loop Password=Mid(Password,12,36) 'PARAMETERS ConString="Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Data Source=mbam,1433;Initial Catalog=MBAM Recovery and Hardware;User ID=OSD;Password=Password123" 'MAIN SQL="SELECT RecoveryKey FROM RecoveryAndHardwareCore.Keys WHERE RecoveryKeyID='" &Password &"'" Set RsTemp=GetRs(SQL) RecoveryKey=RsTemp("RecoveryKey") oEnv("RecoveryKey")=RecoveryKey msgbox "RecoveryKey retrieved from MBAM is:" &RecoveryKey Function GetRs(SQL) Dim Con Dim Rs Set Con=CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Con.Open(ConString) Set Rs=Con.Execute(SQL) GetRs=Rs End Function </script> </job> ok so what does this script do ? the script makes a call to the SQL database on our MBAM server (Data Source=mbam) specifies the Database (MBAM Recovery and Hardware) and the user/password we need to connect with (User ID=OSD;Password=Password123) like so:- ConString="Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Data Source=mbam,1433;Initial Catalog=;User ID=OSD;Password=Password123" This requires SQL Server Authentication to be setup in SQL Server and Windows authentication mode (mixed) so you'll need to configure this on your MBAM server (right click on your SQL server in SQL Management Studio, choose properties, security). and configure the OSD user in SQL like so with access to the MBAM Recovery and Hardware database In your Refresh task sequence you'll need to add a few new steps to get the key from your MBAM server, the first step is called Get Recovery Key from MBAM SQL in WinPE. Note:- We only try to get the key if a Protected Volume (Encrypted) is detected (Guide here), there's no need for us to get the key if the drive is already unlocked so checking that its Protected is an important step. Now that we have the key from MBAM it has been nicely placed in a variable for us called RecoveryKey, we unlock the drive using the following command in the next step called Unlock Bitlockered Drive manage-bde -unlock d: -RecoveryPassword %%RecoveryKey%% The next step simply Suspends the Bitlockered drive manage-bde d: -protectors -disable Ok that's the explanation, how can you test it ? First of all you'll need to Deploy a computer with Windows 7 and BitLocker encryption on it . Once done, install the MBAM client agent on the computer (see link 2 below or install it manually). In addition to the above you'll want MBAM configured (local group policies and MBAM server side).. Once done, login to your Windows 7 computer and start an Administrative Command Prompt. type the following:- manage-bde -protectors -get c: it will return something like the following if BitLockered the Password listed is our Recovery Key. To verify that this value is in our MBAM database simply login to the Database using SQL Management Studio and expand the MBAM Recovery and Hardware database. Expand it so that you can see the tables and choose the RecoveryAndHardwareCore.Keys table. Right click the Table and choose Select top 1000 Rows. Verify that the password revealed from our Windows 7 command prompt is present in our MBAM database. As you can see from the screenshot, the RecoveryKey is indeed listed and that means you are now ready to test the script in WinPE and to test a Refresh scenario ! If the key does NOT appear (and the MBAM client agent can take time to send this info, up to 90 minutes or more...) then simply restart the MBAM client agent service (BitLocker Management Client Service) on your Windows 7 client, wait a minute and try again. good luck ! Related reading: 1. Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) - http://www.microsoft.../mdop/mbam.aspx 2. Deploying the MBAM agent using ConfigMgr - http://technet.micro...indows/hh328534 3. How can I determine if the drive is Encrypted (Protected) or not during a BitLocker task sequence in WinPE ? http://myitforum.com...e-in-winpe.aspx 4. Is the TPM Chip Enabled or Disabled in the Bios on my Dell system ? http://myitforum.com...ell-system.aspx 5. How can I determine if there's a TPM chip on my Dell system needed for BitLocker ? http://myitforum.com...-bitlocker.aspx

have you seen the windows-noob.com Multipurpose HTA frontend ?

well done on solving the issues !

in the configmgr client on the windows 7 boxes, what actions are listed in the Actions tab ? does ccmsetup.log report any problems ?

do you mean in the Configmgr console or on the Windows client computer ? if it's in the console select one update then scroll down to where you want the last update and click while holding shift, that will select all those updates (alternatively select all updates with ctrl_a)