The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

The deployment wizard was not showing any Task Sequences after an upgrade from MDT 2010 U1 to MDT 2012 beta2.

Of course I updated my Deployment Share after the upgrade. Updating a second time, and completely regenerate the boot images got my attention that I didn’t reimported the boot images into WDS.

After reimporting the new generated boot images with MDT 2012 my Task Sequences showed up and I was able to start deploying again!

So don’t forget to reimport your WinPE boot images after upgrading to MDT 2012!

I was deploying Windows ThinPC using MDT with a customer, and received this error:

Windows could not parse or process unattend answer file [C:\MININT\unattend.xml] for pass [windowsPE]. A component or setting specified in the answer file does not exist.

According to the MS forums this should be solved in MDT 2012 beta 1. So we upgraded to MDT 2012 beta 2, but unfortunately the error remains.

Deleting the <UpgradeData> node from the unattend.xml, like Michael mentioned, fixed the issue. Windows ThinPC deployed successful when this node was removed.

As of this writing, the SQL Server installed within the PoC Jumpstart Kit 2.0 is expired. While the new version 3.0 isn’t available yet.

This can be solved by disabling the time synchronization between the host, set the date to one in the past, and restart de SQL services afterwards.

net stop vmictimesync
date 24/2/2011
net start mssql$pocserver
net start mssql$microsoftscm
net start mssql$maps
net start vmictimesync

source: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpropoc/thread/6ccb11d4-e2cf-4af3-8df1-d2fdfb294d33

Edit: Proof of Concept Jumpstart Kit v3.0 was released, start your download managers!

In many cases virtual applications will talk to physical ones. That’s one of the reasons to keep Adobe Reader installed locally.

But we’ve got an issue with the Reader again.

Launching a PDF file from within the bubble gave an Access Denied error (using a physical Adobe Reader 10.1):

There was an error opening the document. Access Denied

This issue exits only when the PDF file is stored on a “personal folder”, like the Desktop-folder for example. (local User NTFS permissions?).

This isn’t an App-V issue but a Reader X feature called Protected Mode that gave this error.

It can be solved with some basic OSD scripting, but the first step is here to stay: “Know your application”. As Reader X gave this error, we can disable this feature with a registry key. Most of the work is to find out what registry key to set. To keep this short, here is my OSD script that disables Adobe Reader Protected Mode when opening Reader from within a App-V application:

<REGISTRY>
<REGKEY HIVE=”HKCU” KEY=”SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\10.0\Privileged” NOREDIR=”FALSE”>
<REGVALUE REGTYPE=”REG_DWORD” NAME=”bProtectedMode”>00000000</REGVALUE>
</REGKEY>
</REGISTRY>

This goes into the VIRTUALENV-tag.

Happy sequencing!

I’ve had some trouble with slow logon on Windows Server 2008 R2. The “Applying Computer Settings”-part takes about two minutes!

The eventlog shows two records about this issue:

The winlogon notification subscriber <GPClient> is taking long time to handle the notification event (CreateSession).

And:

The winlogon notification subscriber <GPClient> took xxx seconds to handle the notification event (CreateSession).

I stumbled upon some possible solutions. The first was updating the NIC driver. As I’m using the wireless network card, I’m only updating this one.

Updating NIC driver

Old driver:

New driver:

Drivers are updated but the logon time wasn’t reduced by a single second.

Disable Computer GPO’s

Second try was moving the computer object to a unmanaged OU (without policies applied), run gpupdate /force and rebooted some times .. but the problem still exists.

GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue

Third try: adding GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue with value 1 to the registry:

Maybe it’s a service or application on the computer itself .. ? I disabled some 3rd party (non Microsoft) services, but the problem remains.

Disable IPv6?

–> no luck

Disable CardReader?

–> no effect

Disable Autotuning?

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

Didn’t solved it either, so I enabled Autotuning again:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

Patches/Hotfixes?

KB2617858: Unexpectedly slow startup or logon process in Windows Server 2008 R2 or in Windows 7

KB2525332: You encounter a long logon time after you enable the "Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline" Group Policy setting in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2

–> This hotfix fixes the slow logon issue for me! (I’m using redirected folders!)

MDT 2012 Beta 2 is available for download on Microsoft Connect.  The most important changes are ConfigMgr 2012 compatibility, improved Lite Touch user experience and a nice and easy upgrade process! Read all about MDT 2012 b2 at the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Team Blog.

If 1Day = 30 hours then

WScript.Echo “Stay tuned at The D-Spot for some posts about the new beta product!”

End If

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 RC1 (build 7678) is available for download!

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27841

After adding a security group to an AppV Application using the AppV Management console, the lovely error “Unexpected error” pops up.

Unable to modify the specified Application.
Please report the following error code to your system administrator.
Error code: 0000B004.

Maybe it had something to do with deleted security groups, hence the SID’s:

I found KB930424, but didn’t had the second error in sft-server.log. Therefor my chances to succeed weren’t high. Anyway, I changed the AppV Database transaction log to “Unrestricted File Growth”.

But that didn’t solved the 0000B004 error. I still wasn’t able to change permissions for that particular application

After a while I stumbled upon Hotfix Package 2 for AppV 4.5 Service Pack 1: March 2010. The changelog says:

When you try to use the Microsoft Application Virtualization Server Management Console to remove group assignments for an Active Directory group that has already been deleted, the removal fails together with the 0000B004 error code.

Also Service Pack 2 for AppV Management Server 4.5 contains this hotfix!

Once in a while you need to patch Office 2010 sequences with the latest security fixes from Microsoft. I needed to patch a package which contained Excel 2010 and an Excel Addin.

I prepared my sequence machine with:

• Windows patches, dummy printer, dummy odbc connections
• App-V Sequencer 4.6
• Placed new addin sources and the sequence to upgrade on the desktop
• Made a snapshot

Started the Sequencer, opened the package for upgrade. Enabled “Show Advanced Monitoring Options”, and select “Allow Microsoft Update to run during monitoring”. So far so good, but after downloading & installing the patches all of them failed to install!

All patches failed with error code 0×80070643.

What went wrong?

I forgot to install the OSPP (Office Software Protection Platform) service on my sequence machine! (AKA Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V).

After installing the prerequisite all security fixes installed successful:

I needed to change the config.xml for an Office (OneNote) 2010 deployment. After changing the config file I tested the silent installation but the installer couldn’t handle my newly created config.xml file.

All my xml tags where closed like it should, I couldn’t find any syntax error. But then I remembered something learned at school (it’s been 10 years!); opening an XML file in Internet Explorer to verify the syntax!

I used the Dutch word “geïnstalleerd”. After removing the special character (changed to “geinstalleerd)”, the Office 2010 installation was successful.