Introducing the windows-noob.com FrontEnd HTA ver 1.0

[anyweb]

Introduction:

After a lot of development and testing and countless changes it's time to release version 1.0 of the windows-noob.com FrontEnd HTA. This HTA can be used by Network administrators/techs to quickly make choices about Deployment Type (Backup, Reinstall, New Computer) for their migrations from Windows XP to Windows 7.

 

Update: This HTA has been updated with a new version here. Please review it's features.

The HTA comes with pre-written scripts that do the hard work for you and set variables based on choices made by the end user. These variables are in turn used by the backend Task Sequence to do the actual heavy lifting. If you stick to the default Task Sequence included here, then when you start it you'll see a password prompt



enter Password123 to continue, if you get it wrong it will abort the task Sequence so be careful .

Once you've entered the password correctly the HTA itself will display, currently it's adjustable in size, you can edit the DeployMenu.hta to maximise it by editing the following lines,

<HTA:APPLICATION ID="objTest" APPLICATIONNAME="Frontend HTA" SCROLL="yes" SINGLEINSTANCE="yes">
<!HTA:APPLICATION ID="objTest" APPLICATIONNAME="Frontend HTA" SCROLL="No" SINGLEINSTANCE="YES" BORDER="none" CAPTION="no" WINDOWSTATE=MAXIMIZE SINGLEINSTANCE="yes">

The Backup option allows you to Backup the data in several different ways (option to run CHKDSK before backup, full WIM backup both locally and network, Offline Scanstate in WinPE which is then backed up to a network Share) and also allows you to Create a computer association between source and destination computer while in WinPE if you want to do traditional SMP based state backup (note however for SMP based scenarios that the scanstate must be performed separately while in the full Windows OS using a separate Task Sequence).]

Note: If the computer is has a computername matching MININT- then you will be prompted to enter a computername before backup continues.



The Reinstall option allows users to Quickly backup data (using offline mode in WinPE and hardlinking) and install Windows 7 Enterprise on existing hardware. They can also optionally specify a user which will then become the Local Administrator of that computer.

Note: If the computer is has a computername matching MININT- then you will be prompted to enter a computername before Reinstall continues.



The New Computer option allows you to choose regional and language options offline via drop down menus (4 languages offered, can be expanded upon easily). In addition, you can select to restore User data (or not), you can also select which OLD_computername profile to restore, or choose SMP if you want to use this New Computer as the Destination computer once a computer association has been previously made and the State captured.



Requirements:

The HTA has the following prerequisites:-

* MDT 2010 update 1 integrated with ConfigMgr
* Maik Kosters Web Services 7.2 installed - quick quide here
* SCCM 2007 SP2 R2 or later
* Implement Offline scanstate in WinPE as shown here
* Install Language packs Offline using SCCM 2007 sp2


Features

The windows-noob.com HTA has the following features:-

The windows-noob.com FrontEnd HTA ver 1.0 is primarily used for Deploying (or migrating to) Windows 7, and it offers the following features,

• Backup
• Reinstall
• New Computer

The three Operating System Deployment scenarios, Backup, Reinstall (refresh) and New Installation (bare metal/new computer) offer their own options, detailed below:-

Backup features
Chkdsk
full wim backup (local)
full wim backup (network)
Offline scanstate in WinPE (network)

Reinstall features
Chkdsk
full wim backup (local)
full wim backup (network)
Offline scanstate in WinPE (local using hardlinking)
Username becomes Local Administrator

New Computer Features
Regional settings (drop down choice)
Language Settings (drop down choice)
Username
Computername
Restore Users data (drop down choice, none, SMP or Offline via Network)


Additional Features

In addition to the above, you have the ability to:



Exit from the HTA
Open a command prompt
Create a Computer Association (see below)



Show information about a client, including IP Address, MAC address, GUID, etc (see below), Reboot or Shutdown.



so that's the introduction now here's how to implement it in your lab..

Update:- If you want to use Multi Language or Multi Keyboard Layouts then please see this update

[anyweb]

you could probably script your way around it but why bother, MDT offers you scripts and additional functionality that benefits any SCCM installation,

[irfanali]

Hi,

can you please share any example or article you have on how to script it ?

As i already told you we dont have MDT in our environment. i want to achive this only using SCCM.

 

Please help

[anyweb]

there's no easy way to do it, why don't you just integrate MDT with SCCM ? what is stopping you from doing so ?

[irfanali]

I have 38 locations where i have installed DP.

On primaray site i have 5 servers for SCCM infrastructure.

 

The thing which is stopping me is to add more hardware for MDT which i dont hav. as far as i know i need to add 1 extra machine on every location where i have PXE enabled and where i need this functionality. AM i right ?

 

Regards

[anyweb]

no new hardware needed, just download mdt 2010 update 1 and integrate it with SCCM and enjoy the benefits of MDT integrated into sccm, you'll have to create your MDT Toolkit and MDT Settings packages, but that is beyond the scope of this post (which is about the windows-noob.com FrontEnd HTA ver 1.0), if you need help with integrating mdt and creating the packages, then create a new post

[byork]

Hi,

This looks like a great tool. And my coworker and I definitely appreciate your guys site, we've been using it a lot for our Windows 7 deployment. We are trying to do a no touch deployment from Windows XP to Win7 64, however, due to paranoia we are required to take a backup image of every users machine before we migrate them to Win7. So I'm wondering if you have documented anywhere how to perform a network backup through WinPE in a SCCM Task sequence. It looks like you can do it through this HTA, but we would prefer not to have to use the HTA since we already know what we will be doing with each PC.

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

[anyweb]

well download the task sequence associated with this hta and look at the backup steps, it does cater for backing up to a network share using ztibackup, you should be able to copy those steps out and into your own task sequence but you may have to set the variables somehow (either in the task sequence or computer variables or collection variables)

[byork]

well download the task sequence associated with this hta and look at the backup steps, it does cater for backing up to a network share using ztibackup, you should be able to copy those steps out and into your own task sequence but you may have to set the variables somehow (either in the task sequence or computer variables or collection variables)

Thanks, I did try that, sorry I forgot to mention it. I've also tried this http://scug.dk/blogs...-from-a-ts.aspx in its own task sequence both task sequences start up in WinPE then immediately restart. So I don't get any error message at all.

 

 

If my backup location is a network location do I need to provide the task sequence with a username and password to login?

[anyweb]

if you look at the task sequence i've supplied there is a network connect step, and that must occur (it maps to a drive letter) before you can store anything on the network, below is the XML from the step in the task sequence itself, just import the TS into configmgr and you can see the step yourself

 

-<step name="Connect to Network Folder" description="This step is needed otherwise we cannot display any stored States in the Bare Metal/New Computer scenario" successCodeList="0" runIn="WinPEandFullOS" type="SMS_TaskSequence_ConnectNetworkFolderAction">

<action>smsnetuse.exe %SMSConnectNetworkFolderPath%</action>

-<defaultVarList>

<variable property="DriveLetter" name="SMSConnectNetworkFolderDriveLetter">

Z:</variable>

<variable property="Password" name="SMSConnectNetworkFolderPassword">

</variable>

<variable property="Path" name="SMSConnectNetworkFolderPath">

\\sccm\USMTStores

</variable>

<variable property="Username" name="SMSConnectNetworkFolderAccount">

server2008\sccmnaa

</variable>

</defaultVarList>

</step>

[byork]

Actually, turns out its not a problem with any task sequence, we are having much worse issues. Our SCCM is not working, our network access account is locking and SCCM cannot access our SQL server that hosts the SMS database.

 

Just found out as i was typing this response, from our DBA that the SMS service on the database terminated and wont successfully restart.

 

 

Thank you for your response though.