IcemanND

Don't know of an standalone server piece off the top of my head but there are many portable VNC viewers. Here for starters: http://www.pendriveapps.com/software/portable-vnc/

I can't think of a way to prevent the minimizing, but you could write a Autoit script to watch the window and maximize it if it found it minimized.

Store the HTTP string in a variable: HTTPString = "http://169.254.1.1/main.cgi?mac_esn=XXXXXXXXXXXXa&catindex=3&pageindex=1&Session=1979932169" Now your REPLACE to put your MAC address in the place of XXXXXXXXXXXX FinalHTTP = Replace (HTTPString, "XXXXXXXXXXXX", YourMAC) Then call ie.Navigate with the new string ie.navigate(FinalHTTP)

What does this return? netsh interface show interface

netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection" DISABLED Worked just fine on my Win7 x64 system.

creating the install.wim is the same as capturing your ghost image. You can still use ghost to capture and deploy the image if you so desire. Otherwise you can use WinPE and imagex to capture and deploy the image.

Glad to see the finally added .NET framework and Powershell support to WinPE

Boot from a WinPE cd or thumbdrive and you can use my keydecoder to extract the vista key from the install if the registry is still readable. But Jaclaz is right that is normally a boot record/sector issue. See it a lot on Lenovo laptops that have a custom boot record that is larger than the standard boot sector size.

What is in listvol.txt?

I still maintain that it is a hardware failure or difference (bios, hw build, etc, Dell has caused this issue for me for years), if you had it work without error on 90% of the systems it is not your image or your answer file. Are you using the Universal Imaging Utility in creating your image?

goto %1 :sorry Echo Sorry! Goto :end :welcome echo welcome Goto :end :end just use the label name for the switch

If this is a direct copy and paste of the commands you are missing a " in the second line, or maybe a [ instead?

verify the bios level on the ten machines is the same as the other 30. We used to have this problem regularly with windows xp and Dell systems when motherboards were replaced under warranty and were a different BIOS revision or HW build revision.

When/how are these accounts created? This box is checked by default on local accounts created via the GUI. If you are creating them via script why not create them with this already set? Powershell example: function New-LocalUser ([string]$accountName = "testuser") { $comp = [ADSI] "WinNT://computername" $user = $comp.Create("User", $accountName) $user.put("PasswordExpired",1) $user.SetPassword("P@ssw0rd") $user.SetInfo() }

Create a Windows PE boot disk based on the Vista or Windows 7 WAIK. I have two tutorials on doing this on the forum. When the Boot.wim (or winpe,wim) file is mounted edit the startnet.cmd file and add your diskpart command, imagex command and an EXIT to the end of the file. copy your system image to the ISO folder. Create your ISO. Start burning DVD's.

create a ISO of your boot media. Boot from the ISO and either connect ot a network share form the VM, or connect a USB hard drive to the VM then capture the image to that device/connection. I don't use virtual box so I don't know if this is possible with virtualbox, but with VMWare and Virtual PC there are ways to mount the Virtual Disk as a hard drive and then you can capture the image from the captured drive to your image.

You can configure GPO startup and logon script to run visibly. Startup: Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Scripts\Run startup scripts visible Logon User Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Scripts\Run logon scripts visible

More elegant? It is a video of the instructions in the document I linked to. Oh, and I provide text you can copy and paste into the command prompt so you don't have to type.

Don't know of a way to capture an image without creating some form of boot media and using some appropriate tool to perform the capture.

Google USB file transfer cable: http://www.google.com/search?q=usb+file+transfer+cable&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=uvU&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=DnclTpO4NMjv0gGCvsTqCg&ved=0CGAQrQQ&biw=1180&bih=949

Whatever Boot.wim version you are using x86 or x64 is the version of the drivers you need to integrate. There have also been reports from some manufacturers with issues with USB3 and devices plugged in at boot up not showing up correctly or causing boot issues, most have released bios updates to solve the issue. Make sure your BIOS is up to date.

Been there, took over a year for us to implement SMS 3, SCCM 2007 was out for more than 2 years before we upgraded to it, hopefully once 2012 is released we can get it deployed in less than a year this time. If you have more questions let me know, or check out myitforum.com there is a very large and knowledgeable SCCM community there.

As far as SCCM 2007 (current release), 2012 is supposed to be released end of 2011-beginning of 2012, see comments below: The new technology MUST: DOES IT (Need PXE boot or vPRO to turn machines on if you complete hands off) - Deploy Windows 7 to any bare bones machine (including driver insertion) DOES IT (Need PXE boot or vPRO to turn machines on if you complete hands off) - Deploy Windows 2008 to any bare bones machine regardless (including driver insertion) Needs to configure OSD (Operating System Deployment in SCCM) DOES IT - Deploy Software from MSI - can be imported and SCCM will create the package for you with Attended, unattended, per-user, per-computer, and uninstall options created in four easy clicks. DOES IT - Deploy Software from Non-MSI (flat file, single registry key, third party installer) Or run and executable file, or script, or any number of other tasks related to running programs and tasks SORT OF - Deploy Software based on Active Directory Group Membership n SCCM you create Collections based on your desired target group of machines needing a piece of software. Collections are created using SQL queries of information in the SCCM database and can be based on almost anything you can think of including AD groups or OU membership. Partly - Deploy Software with 'pre-requisites and supersedes' smarts built in You can create software packages for deployment and assign other packages that need to be installed before that package is installed. For supersedes there isn't something "built-in" you could create an uninstall package and have it run before your updated package installs though. YES! All the way down - Deploy Windows Security Patches Deploy Windows Security Patches with respect to groups (ie node A is patched fully before node B is patched) Ability to Permanently exclude Security Patches that are irrelevant to a system Ability to Disapprove a Security Patches Report on Windows Security Patch Gaps WSUS can be added to and controlled by SCCM and will do all of the above, including putting a patch back on a machine if a user removes it, removing a patch if you disapprove it, only applies patches relevant to the target system even if the systems are not configured the same so if a machine has Office 2007 and Office 201 patches are in the assigned patch list it will not install them until it sees Office 2010 is installed on the machine. If you have seen the reports you get from WSUS the reports you get in SCCM for patches are 100 times better. We have both WSUS and SCCM with WSUS, the machines looking at WSUS alone are 33% further behind on patch compliance than the machines using SCCM/WSUS combination. DOES IT - Report on software deployments for licensing compliance With conditions - Support a replicated Multi-tiered infrastructure deployments (Internal, DMZ-I, DMZ-E info all in the same Microsoft SQL database) As long as the SCCM server has access to reach machines in all of the networks. Be supported by the supplying vendor on a vmware platform Officially not on VMWare, but it does run just fine in VMWare. It is only an issue if they feel the issue you call about is base hardware related. Be sure you discuss with Microsoft what your deployment size will be so you size your "servers" apropriately, and talk with your VM supplier to do the same. Absofrigginlutely - Provide a configuration management database that lets you put manual descriptions hardware, asset and IP addressing information in through multiple methods you can extend the inventory database and what is collected from machines The new technology SHOULD: Allow you to Add/Remove things from an SOE without having to recreate SOE from scratch. - Can't think of anything where you have to start over from scratch, at least I have not had to yet, we phased in various different features and no one knew we added them until we turned on all the lights and announced it. Deploy user based software that installs on first run instead of installing all your apps upon first log in - It all depends upon how you create your packages and tasks Allow administrative removal of an application from a machine when you're out of a group - It all depends upon how you create your packages and tasks - can also create packages to perform uninstalls Automatically associate users to machines based on the last log on - not directly but can be done. Don't recall if that was something I added to the inventory r if it previously existed. Report on hardware inventory Report on software inventory - or network address, or subnet, printers, peripherals, encryption, or what else can you come up with? Report on user to machine inventory - not sure what you mean by this one but probably, database extending might be needed Not require the user to have local administrative privileges - programs can be advertised or assigned and can be set to install with admin rights or with user rights I've been using SCCM in two different environments for seven years now and would never want to be without it. We started with a small subset of features and have been adding more as need/demand arises.

First one might be an option that's one I hadn't found, have to wait until tomorrow to try it. The second one either disables the sleep option and leaves it on the shutdown menu, or removes sleep, shutdown and restart which I still need restart and shutdown and would rather not put them as shortcuts anywhere..

Why is it I always ask the hard questions no one has answers for.