Using Task Sequence Variables to make life a bit easier in ConfigMgr 2007

Sometimes you think you’ve got it all, so you start looking for things to make it better and easier. Well…, to be honest I’m not even close to having it all, but I am looking to make things better and easier. This is why I started looking more on using Task Sequence Variables, because they can make life a whole lot easier. In this post I will use a Task Sequence Variable to prevent the need of building two separate Task Sequences. Let’s start with telling the scenario. I have a Task Sequence that I use for a computer-refresh by using hard-links (take a look at thisprevious post). Now I want to use the same Task Sequence to perform a clean install. Of course it’s …

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ConfigMgr 2007, USMT 4.0 and using Hard-Links

One of the coolest new functions of USMT 4.0 is the new hard-link migration store (only for computer-refresh scenarios). These migration stores are stored locally on the computer that is being refreshed and can migrate user accounts, files and settings. This way it will save time and space during a computer-refresh (and you do not need a State Migration Point!). When you create a default Task Sequence it will create the steps Request User State Storage and Release User State Storage. These steps are needed to interact with the State Migration Point (SMP) to get available space and to tell that the action completed successfully. So these steps are not needed anymore when you are using hard-links! This is why these steps are grayed out …

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Copy logs from a failed Task Sequence in ConfigMgr 2007

I like to do multiple things at a time… So I don’t like to wait on my Task Sequence, after I made a a few changes, to see if it doesn’t fail. This is why I searched for some sort of error catching in a Task Sequence. During this search I found this great article of Steve Raichu: http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/archive/2008/07/15/capturing-logs-during-failed-task-sequence-execution.aspx In this article he explains the following important steps that are needed for an automatic error catching: Use a top group in a Task Sequence that is set to Continue on error. The rest of your functioning Task Sequence has to be added under this group. In this way the Task Sequence will continue to the following group if a part of the Task Sequence has …

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How to create a Capture Only Task Sequence with ConfigMgr 2007

Some things are a lot easier then you might think. One of these things is creating a Capture Only Task Sequence. As you all know there is the option within ConfigMgr 2007 to create a Build and Capture Task Sequence, well creating a Capture Only Task Sequence is nothing more then taking the Capture part of the default Build and Capture Task Sequence. So I use in my Capture Only Task Sequence the following steps: Join Workgroup (this step is only necessary when the Reference Machine is joined to a domain) Prepare ConfigMgr Client Prepare OS Capture the Reference Machine The first steps all need to run in Full OS, which means that you can’t start this Task Sequence by booting in WinPE. I just …

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Installing Software Updates via a Task Sequence in ConfigMgr 2007

I noticed that when your Site is running in Native Mode you can run into problems with installing Software Updates via a Task Sequence. The first time that your are installing your computer with your Task Sequence there are no problems, but every time after that the Task Sequence will finish successful but doesn’t install any Software Updates. It looks like that it will use existing scan results of the client from the previous scan. So when there are already scan results of your client it will not rescan during your Task Sequence. To work around this I use the following scripts (that I run before the step Install Software Updates in the Task Sequence): Initiate Software Updates Scan: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144313.aspx actionNameToRun = “Software Updates Assignments …

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