Changing Themes on a locked down machine

A user recently contacted me as she had inadvertantly activated "High Contrast" so her screen was black with purple task bars.  After having a bit of fun with her explaining this was Microsofts Halloween Theme that kicks in every year during Halloween week I thought I should come clean.

As her machine was locked down with group policy I couldn't revert back to the standard theme using the normal methods so I came across this useful little script thanks to user "Misfortune" on the Windows 7 Forums

If you open up an admin command prompt and run this you should be able to revert it back.  You can replace "Classic.Theme" with other options if you look in the file path you should be able to see the other themes...

rundll32.exe %SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL %SystemRoot%\system32\desk.cpl desk,@Themes /Action:OpenTheme /file:"C:\Windows\Resources\Ease of Access Themes\classic.theme" 

ifM63x64.sys file missing or corrupt - SCCM OSD (X1 Carbon)

Building a new Lenovo X1 Carbon with the new integrated LAN adapter (no more guessing which USB port to use!) via SCCM 2007 and I came across this little blinder.

After the first reboot to OS I was presented with this error screen:

I spotted that is was driver in my driver pack (taken from Lenovo's SCCM pack) for the  Intel Ethernet FCoE Virtual Storport Miniport Driver.

I located the driver in my driver pack and removed it - left he check box UNTICKED to update the distribution point and then manually when and updated it after myself. 

Once I was happy that the source had incremented by one version I kicked off the build again.

Sure enough it sailed through and we are all happy....

 

The Dells... THE DELLS !!!

So phase 2 of our Windows 7 deployment begins next week.  We have approx 1000 machines we are visiting with a raft of memory to upgrade to 4GB and give a new lease of life in the form of my Windows 7 Image.

Up until last week the entire non-Lenovo estate was to replaced.  Today I've been told all:

Dell 755
Dell 760
Dell 780
Dell 790

HP DC7800
HP DC7900
HP 6000
HP 8000
HP 8200

is to be upgraded.  And rebuilt.  With Windows 7.  For which we have no driver packs!!!  All to be done by Monday - gee thanks!

So my next few posts will more than likely be technical gotchas, quirks and foibles that us deployment engineers encounter...

X1 Carbon Incorrect Hash Errors during OSD

I was fighting with this one for a couple of days.  Lenovo X1 Carbon - deploying Windows 7 x64.  All drivers were fine and dandy but I was getting randon "Incorrect hash value" errors when the OSD was failing.

This was determined by looking in the SMSTS.log once the OSD had failed.

It transpires that if the USB to Ethernet adapter was plugged in to the right hand USB socket it was dropping loads of packets.  Plugging it into the left hand side worked a treat.

As simple a solution as it sounds this may be far too obvious for some tecchy to even try.  I managed to replicate this on 3 different units so it wasn't just faulty parts.

Felt like a complete numpty once I discovered the fix!

Create a bootable USB pen for SCCM Windows 7 Build Deployment

If you are ever in a situation where deploying your OS by SCCM's more conventional methods (ie PXE or LAN based deployments) isn't feasable (bandwidth/no connectivity) then you can prepare a USB pen and deploy to machines via a USB boot.

I've found the SCCM built in method of making a USB pen to be quite unreliable so I opt for the manual method.

Just a few heads up first:

• I'd recommend at least an 8GB drive but in reality your build (if corporate) will eventually exceed this.
• The pen will be totally wiped clean - all data will be lost.

Step 1:  Preparing the USB pen

1. Open command prompt
2. Type diskpart and press enter
3. Type list disk and press enter
4. Find your disk in the list
5. Type select disk * (* being your number)
6. Type clean and press enter - you should see "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk."
7. Type create partition primary and press enter - you should see "DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition."
8. Type select partition 1 and press enter - you should see "Partition 1 is now the selected partition." 
9. Type active and press enter - you should see "DiskPart Marked the current partition as active."
10. Type assign and press enter - you should see "DiskPart successfully assigned a drive letter ..."
11. Type detail disk and press enter.  For this example we will work with a drive letter "U" for USB
12. Type exit to leave the Diskpart command and return to a standard prompt

Step 2:  Formatting & Copying

We are still using a drive letter "U:" so we want to type:

format U: /fs:fat32 /q YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING ON THE PEN HERE

Enter a label for the drive - this is how it will show in "Computer"

I copy the files manually - it works - but if you want to do it "properly" use this command:

In command prompt navigate to the location of your build files - this is what would have been extracted from the ISO that was produced in SCCM when you "Created Removable Media" from the OSD task sequence - if you need a guide on this mail me or leave a comment...

Type xcopy \*.* /s/e/f \ 

With our extracted ISO in C:\Win7Build and our pen being U:\ This would look like:

Type xcopy c:\Win7Build\*.* /s/e/f U:\ 

Don't forget you may/will need to adjust the boot order in the BIOS to accommodate booting from USB - you can find a guide here: http://bit.ly/TvndIW

Windows 7 Pilot

So the pilot went live today. Our rollout contractor and supplier were both at HQ to watch our first presaged machine go from warehouse to desk and thankfully it built without a hitch.

3 more were put in situ with a further 2 having to go on hold as we had a [unrelated] network outage - apparently it was a touch too warm today for our aircon units in the datacentre.

Really happy with the outcome of Prestaged Media within SCCM and will continue to blog further findings :)

Empty program list in SCCM Task Sequence

I've just come in to find our Windows 7 builds are failing on a specific program that is installed during the task sequence.  It happens it was Trend Anti Virus which I had been working on the previous day.

Before getting into the log files I had a look at the task sequence and noticed that there was no program listed.  Ah ha!  Problem solved > click drop down and select program....  No programs are listed ??!!  I checked the package and I have two programs in there - a standard install and one with verbose logging enabled...

Tried deleting the step in the TS and recreating it... Still nothing...

Resolution

I hold my hand up here - I had changed the interaction to "Only when a user is logged in"

Changed it back and sure enough it was back to normal.


Not so much a problem but it's worth noting - if it's a Friday morning and you haven't had your coffee yet it may catch you out...

Hope this helps someone :)

Error 1723: Can not uninstall JRE update X from Windows 7

I came across this today whilst helping one of our install techs update Java for a customer on a machine he was installing.

It was Windows 7 Ent 64bit SP1 with Java v19 installed.  Upon attempting to uninstall he received the error:

Error 1723: Can not uninstall JRE update from Windows 7.

After a bit of digging around I discovered the error was referring to a missing DLL.

By going into the registry and finding the MSI entry I tried an uninstall using the following command:

msiexec.exe /x{26A24AE4-039D-4CA4-87B4-2F83216019FF}

This was found here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall   -  this is a great tip for any app packagers needing to discover the msi registered to a piece of software for uninstalls etc...

Again I received the same error message.  To enable error logging I added /L javauninst.log and discovered it was missing the "regutils.dll" located here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin

I copied the file across from an existing machine and voilà - it worked !

Another Java/MSI quirk but non the less slightly perplexing to say the least. 

Hope this helps someone else sometime...

C

This task sequence cannot be run because a package referenced by the task sequence could not be found.

If like me you have been bashing your head against many firewalls during Windows 7 OSD via SCCM you will probably sometime come across the error:

This task sequence cannot be run because a package referenced by the task sequence could not be found.

More annoyingly it doesn't reference the guilty package in the onscreen error.  After checking the many log files CCM generates I found within the RAM drive path: x:\windows\temp\SMSTSLog resides the relevent SMSTS.LOG file.

The full error I recieved was after selecting the relevant OSD TS; resolving polices and then BAM :

This task sequence cannot be run because a package referenced by the task sequence could not be found. For more information, please contact your system administrator or helpdesk operator.

I also noticed (and please use SMS Trace to view error logs):

Failed to find CCM_SoftwareDistribution object for AdvertID="xxx", PackageID="xxx", ProgramID="*"

I found it was a Lenovo Graphics Driver Package causing the issue; it appears SCCM has yet another little "quirk" where the hash isn't written sometimes upon creation of a package and the initial ditribution.  If the version number of the guilty package is "1" try right clicking on the DP of the package and select "Update Distribution Points".

After some time the Source Version will increment to "2" and the date will be current - give your OSD another try and then see if it works - if it fails - check the log file again as this time the guilty package may have changed and it may be a case of trawling through a few before you resolve the issue.

I hope this helps.

Many thanks to J over at ManagedUX for the pointer!