Hi all
I’m a long time FOG user, who’s just moved from a large education business (3000+ hosts) to a small organization with about 300 PCs. In my new organization they dont have any network solution for deploying images to workstations, so I thought FOG could offer some real benefits.

However they operate a real dynamic DHCP set-up, with a minimal number of reserved IP addresses. As a result I cant really setup FOG host entries with associated IP addresses. In addition, I’m having to battle some reluctance to try FOG from my management, so setting blanket DHCP boot options pointing to the FOG server is a non-starter (at least till I’ve proved what can be done).

Doers anyone have any suggestions how I can image machines without reserved IPs or DHCP options pointing to FOG?

I’ve managed to create a bootable USB disk that can allow me to register hosts to FOG. I was hoping to use Quick Image to just image machines from there on. However I find that Quick Image basically queues a job on the server and then reboots the host so that it can do a PXE boot: this isnt going to work with the limitations described above.

Any ideas? Any way I can start a quick image directly from bootable media?

Thanks

cool - ok - i think it will have to bve a bit of a hybrid approach. i’ve written a ‘backup’ batch file that uses USMT to backup all users profiles to a network share that is named after the PC. Then I’ve got a restore batch file that will restore back to the PC based on the hostname.

I’ve just got to get these batch files successfully turned-into snapins, and hope that the ‘restore’ snapin doesnt run until the PC has re-joined the domain…

The biggest hassle I find in the whole process of imaging machines is backing up the user’s local data beforehand, and restoring it afterwards . The actual imaging process with Fog is a relative breeze.

Of course I have ways of doing it - manual backups, Windows Easy Transfer, USMT, but these are all time consuming and labour intensive: almost enough to put you off re-imaging a PC till you absolutely have to. I keep thinking it would be nice to have some automated backup & restore process that could be performed remotely on a PC.

What are other people doing in this area? Has anyone tried USMT scripts executed remotely? Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to do this via Fog, like some kind of script packaged as a snapin?

Ideas welcome!

Sure - although I realised after I gave them to the last guy in this thread that the snapin might need some customization for your environment. When the shutdown or reboot starts, an on-screen message pops-up that says “Your computer is being restarted remotely by <my organisation’s IT support>. You have thirty seconds to save your work.”
lete me know your email address if you want andI can get in touch.

Ok - no worries - so for these two snapins I’m basically using simple shutdown.exe batch files, with parameters, that I have packed-up along with an executable called HideC.exe which hides the command line window so they run silently. The package is an executable created with SFX Maker. I can send you the executables if you like, and also the batch file command lines. I can’t see how to do a private message on this forum though - would it be easier if I email these to you?

@Bruce if youre still looking or these answers, I have a force shutdown snapin, and a force reboot snapin I can send you the details if you like.

Thanks Andyroo54 - another great article. I’ve started building an image per your WIN7/SAD tool doc, next I’ll try the snapin method you outlined above. I don’ suppose you’ve had any luck with snapins for JAVA RTE have you?

Thanks SSX4Life, doesnt seem to be the same problem (they’re on XP, I’m on 7). I’ve been able to narrow it down a bit more though - my snapin runs when i place it manually on the client desktop and “run as” admin, but it doesn’t work when deployed via FOG… Still playing around trying to get it to work - will post if I find the answer

Anyone got any good tie or creating a java rte update snapin?

I’ve managed to create one that installs JRE6u31, but java update still keeps trying to install the same version…

I’m imaging a lab of 120 Vostro 320 PCs, using a FOG multicast. All of them worked except three, which produce this error message just as FOG is about to start imaging:

HD is null; no hard disk was found.

These three PCs can boot to Windows XP fine (this was the previous install), and the BIOS settings are identical to the other 117 PCs.
If I enter “0” in the Primary Disk field on the FOG host entry (i’m not really sure how this field works - just
clutching at straws here!), things go a bit further, but the image job ends at the following error:

The second argument [01] must be a valid device (ex:/dev/hda1)

Any ideas?
Thanks