Automated Deployment

[Wayne Workman]

@RLane Yes, change it from 2 to 1.

Also, any renaming lines in your unattend.xml file can be removed, and any domain joining lines should most definitely be removed.

[RLane]

@Wayne-Workman It’s currently set to 1. I was asking if it should be on 2 or 1, but you suggest 1, which it currently is. ComputerName is * and nothing regarding my domain is in the unattend file.

Odd.

So ideally after the download of the image, it should reboot, rename/join domain and it’s ready to go?

[Tom Elliott]

@RLane the fog imaging process can rename your client before the system is rebooting. Your computer name field seems to likely be a culprit. The system process is likely changing the name. Then the system sysprep is creating a new name which the client thinks is good to go. I don’t know if this is for sure the case but that reboot is joining the now sysprepped name rather than the name you’re expecting. Once it comes back the client is then changing the name again and joining the domain under the correct name. Maybe try just disabling early changer or remove the computer name setting in the unattend file?

[Wayne Workman]

What Tom said.

[RLane]

@Tom-Elliott Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought if you didn’t want a name assigned via sysprep/unattend, you used * as a placeholder. Is that not the case?

[Tom Elliott]

@RLane I believe * means random computer name, though I am not 100% sure of that.

[RLane]

@Tom-Elliott I didn’t think it would let you sysprep a machine without something defined. I’ll test over the weekend. I’d be curious to know what others use during their sysprep. I’m trying to set this up so once it’s on the login screen, it’s ready to go for the end user. It’s not the end of the world having a tech login to the local admin account to trigger the reboot/rename but this would be ideal to solve properly.

[george1421]

@RLane In my case I don’t let the fog client name/rename the system or connect to AD. I let the sysprep unattend.xml file do that for me. I use a fog post install script to update the unattend.xml file with the machine name and I use a formula to determine the proper OU for the target computer based on the site its deployed at and the (fog) image name sent to the target computer.

https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7740/the-magical-mystical-fog-post-download-script-under-construction

and throwing this one out there for good measure too.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7391/deploying-a-single-golden-image-to-different-hardware-with-fog

[RLane]

@george1421 For someone who is pretty scripting-illiterate, I’ll try to read through it. If anything, all I would do is have the $hostname set the name of the actual host. I have no problem with the client joining the domain. My groups in FOG correlate to the OU that the hosts end in so that shouldn’t be an issue. Interesting tutorials though, thanks for that.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tom-Elliott said in Automated Deployment:

@RLane I believe * means random computer name, though I am not 100% sure of that.

This is fact, an asterisk means unique random name.

[RLane]

@Wayne-Workman If the field is left empty, doesn’t the /oobe trigger prompt you for a computer name?

[x23piracy]

Answer 2: http://superuser.com/questions/471070/automatically-generating-a-prefixed-hostname-during-sysprep

If you set the RegisteredOwner & RegisteredOrganization in the “Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup” section under oobeSystem, then the auto generated name will be prefixed by the owner then the organisation.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/604695dd-3ecb-4b8a-9735-21b557084013/windows-7-sysprep-randomly-generated-name?forum=w7itproinstall

Should be the same as for 10

Regards X23

[RLane]

So excuse my ignorance here, I removed the ComputerName (*) from my unattend.xml file. After the image process completes, the computer reboots three times due to assorted FOG tasks I’m assuming.

The first reboot appears to be for system drivers, changes, etc. immediately after the completion of imaging. The second appears to be to add the computer to the domain. The third reboot is the hostname change.

If I could get it to stop here, that would be great. However, for some reason, once a user tries to log in for the first time, it will reboot the computer again.

Is this a me problem with a script/unattend issue or something by design of FOG?

[Joe Schmitt]

@RLane the client is not built to restart a machine on user log in. Perhaps you have a first-time login script that is running?

[RLane]

@Joe-Schmitt My SetupComplete.bat is setting my Windows 10 KMS, Office 2016 KMS – activating both. It starts the FOG service, and deletes three files/folders (unattend, etc.)

My unattend file has nothing that I can see that would cause a reboot… hmm.

[Joe Schmitt]

@Rlane could you send me the fog.log of a computer right after it does the user reboot? If you could also tell me at what time the user reboot happened so I can look at the fog.log at the time, it would help greatly.

[RLane]

Welp, I’m sorry for bugging everybody. After working on this all day and night, I found that the wrong unattend file was being used… with a restart set to hit 25 seconds after the first user logs in.

On a happy note, my Win10 deployment is finalized, so thanks all for that.

Sorry @joe-schmitt @george1421