anyweb

yes it's possible and here's one way of doing it(there are more, just up to you to get creative with how to accomplish it, but you could use registry settings and active directory checks to accomplish it)

yes no problem, just direct the drivers to the right hardware manufacturer via wmi queries like so

i didn't do that part yet, due to lack of time, but i'll try and re-focus...

sccm can do it sure, just integrate mdt into configmgr and utilise mdt's features from within SCCM, you can create a frontend HTA which can ask this and set corresponding variables, these variables will be checked for in your dynamic task sequence which will or will not install software depending on those variables. and yes you can reimage a computer that is already in sccm by advertising the task sequence to whatever collection you wish (be careful in testing this !) for example All Systems or another collection where you know the computers are in eg: All Windows XP systems however you must get clever with it and change the task sequence properties such that it will only run on an OS that is NOT PRESENT in your organisation, that way it will never appear in RAP but will be available via cd/dvd/usb or PXE boot. I explain this concept here > http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/topic/2336-password-protect-a-task-sequence/

MDT is not needed but is a nice add-on in terms of additional functionality within your task sequences for OSD in SCCM, the WAIK is builtin to SCCM 2007 SP2 and it contains tools such as Microsoft Windows SIM for editing unattend.xml files etc, but not needed for general OSD usage, the sccm guides here on windows-noob will show you when and how to use the features good luck, and welcome ! cheers niall

have you checked your firewall settings ? and your boundaries ?

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thanks for the kind words the wds service has a cache which tends to 'store' things related to pxe boots, this can be set via the registry, so restarting the WDS service is a test to see if it's worth setting this value, so please test it

it wouldn't hurt to try, what values have you configured so far ? have you configured any dhcp server options ?

do you mean your Network Access Account as provided in the computer client agent ? or ?

in that scenario if you immediatly restart the wds service and try again does it work ? what security issues are you facing for unknown computer support ?

well what does your windowsupdate.log say ?

now that we know how to change PowerScheme's we can apply the same logic in a Task Sequence, we use an MDT integrated task sequence to avail of some scripts within MDT. Our first step is to use MDT's Gather function (MDT Settings) to determine if the computer is a laptop or desktop our second step use's the MDT Toolkit Package (MDT Files) as we have copied the powermanagement POW file(s) to a subfolder of the scripts directory called Power Our next step copies the files to our target folder (c:\windows) using this command line xcopy.exe "%deployroot%\scripts\power\*" "c:\Windows" /Q /F /R /Y Now we Import the power scheme using the powercfg -IMPORT command and now we actually apply the power scheme based on whether the client machine is a laptop or desktop, first step is for a laptop and the query to check if it's a laptop is done on the options tab, the step will only run if the variable IsLaptop is True and finally we have the Desktop Step and it's options are as follows that's it, add the group above to a standard Windows 7 Deploy task sequence after the apply operating system step, deploy some Windows 7 laptops and desktops and note the newly changed Power Schemes !

none needed, why are you asking ?

yes i meant there, so it's listed as Installed in package status, then that is good, now you'll need to verify on the client if FireFox is installed or not, is it ? if not, start looking at the logs in ccm\logs to find out what went wrong

well enable verbose logging on Capture User State and Restore, then look at scanstate.log and loadstate.log see where the failure is

well if you could try using a group policy apply step before this to rule out the proxy, it would be a great test you can create the local group policy on a windows 7 client (gpedit.msc) with the proxy change (User Cofiguration, Windows Settings, Internet Explorer Maintenance, Connection, Proxy) once the change is made, apply the group policy (gpupdate /force) then you can copy the files stored on that client computer (C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy) to your SCCM Server as a package, then create a Step in the TS to copy the files in the package to the target computer as a step in the Task Sequence, something like this xcopy.exe "\GroupPolicy" "c:\windows\system32" /E /C /I /Q /H /R /Y /S then Have a step before Install Software Updates called Resetart Computer which restarts the pc (and that means the Local GPO get's applied with the proxy settings)

a few things to try 1. temporarily disable the firewall on client on server to verify it's not the firewall getting in the way 2. verify the application is distributed to the distribution points by checking it's package status, it should say 'installed'

well from the log how long was it waiting, was it like 18 hours ? i know we had issues here with proxy settings causing it to repeat 'waiting for ....' basically because it couldnt talk to the proxy server to get the updates

then that's most likely cuasing your issue, if you can apply a local gpo to set the proxy prior to the software updates task then you should be ok

have a read of this http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/02/11/usmt-ost-and-pst.aspx if you are not including migapp.xml that might be your issue

are you using a proxy in your organisation ?

as the advertisement already ran on your computer it's working as designed, if you want it to run again on your computer create a new advertisement or use right click tools or similar to re-run it

the wiping of the drive is handled by magic or rather by the Apply Operating Image step, try it and see

Yesterday Microsoft unveiled to the masses the beta of its new browser IE9. But this new browser won’t run on the majority of Windows systems currently out there. Is this a problem? Will it encourage XP users to upgrade? Here’s the deal. About two-thirds of PCs out there run Windows XP. Windows XP doesn’t support the Direct2D API that IE9 uses for hardware acceleration. No Direct2D support, no IE9. But does it matter? Well, the first thing to bear in mind is that IE9 is currently in beta, and not the final release. Microsoft hasn’t given us a clue as to when the final release of IE9 will be. Best guess is that it will hit the download servers in April 2011, in time for Microsoft’s MIX web conference. April 2011 is a long way away (in the tech world), so it’s quite likely that Windows 7 will gain more ground during that time, while XP’s market share will continue to slide. I wouldn’t want to bet against that trend. I expect that the holiday spending orgy will result in a significant upgrade uptick. Another point worth bearing in mind is that if you’re happy with an old OS, then chances are that you’re happy with an old browser. Or a non-Microsoft browser. There are alternatives that continue to support XP … for now. Personally, I think that not supporting XP is a good move. Microsoft will continue to stream patches to XP for both the OS and IE until the support period expires, and if XP users want a more modern browser, then they’ve got the option to go for something else (Firefox, Chrome, Opera …). But sometimes you have to draw a line under the past to move forward, and in my opinion Microsoft’s done the right thing here. XP is dead people, time to get used to that. via > http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/dear-xp-users-no-ie9-for-you-listen-up-people-xp-is-dead/9721?tag=mantle_skin;content