Posts made by andreiv

@Sebastian-Roth

No, unfortunately not. I was so busy these last few days that couldn’t make some time to experiment.
As I said, I just took over the management of our university networks and setting everything right will take some time.
But I have this issue on my to-do list because O am directly interested so I didn’t forget. I’ll get back here when I have news.

I agree with George. Your unattend.xml is not complete/correct.

Use Windows System Image Manager to create and verify the XML file.

You can get the WSIM from Windows ADK:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install

Here is one of my sysprep files:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<unattend xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:unattend">
	<settings pass="specialize">
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<TimeZone>GTB Standard Time</TimeZone>
			<ProductKey>NW6C2-QMPVW-D7KKK-3GKT6-VCFB2</ProductKey> <!-- This is the Enterprise Edition key -->
			<!-- <ProductKey>VK7JG-NPHTM-C97JM-9MPGT-3V66T</ProductKey> --> <!-- This is the Professional Edition key -->
			<ComputerName>*</ComputerName>
			<RegisteredOrganization>CUNBM</RegisteredOrganization>
			<RegisteredOwner>LABSWKS</RegisteredOwner> <!-- LabS WorKStation -->
			<CopyProfile>true</CopyProfile>
		</component>
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-UnattendedJoin" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<Identification>
				<JoinWorkgroup>LABSWKS</JoinWorkgroup>
			</Identification>
		</component>
	</settings>
	<settings pass="oobeSystem">
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-International-Core" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<InputLocale>en-US</InputLocale>
			<SystemLocale>en-US</SystemLocale>
			<UILanguage>en-US</UILanguage>
			<UILanguageFallback>en-US</UILanguageFallback>
			<UserLocale>ro-RO</UserLocale>
		</component>
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Setup" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<OOBE>
				<HideEULAPage>true</HideEULAPage>
				<HideLocalAccountScreen>true</HideLocalAccountScreen>
				<HideOEMRegistrationScreen>true</HideOEMRegistrationScreen>
				<HideOnlineAccountScreens>true</HideOnlineAccountScreens>
				<HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>true</HideWirelessSetupInOOBE>
				<ProtectYourPC>1</ProtectYourPC>
			</OOBE>
			<AutoLogon>
				<Enabled>true</Enabled>
				<Username>Student</Username>
				<Password>
					<Value>student</Value>
					<PlainText>true</PlainText>
				</Password>
			</AutoLogon>
		</component>
	</settings>
	<!-- 	<settings pass="generalize">
		<component name="Microsoft-Windows-PnpSysprep" processorArchitecture="amd64" publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" language="neutral" versionScope="nonSxS" xmlns:wcm="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WMIConfig/2002/State" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
			<PersistAllDeviceInstalls>true</PersistAllDeviceInstalls>
		</component>
	</settings> -->
</unattend>

@Sebastian-Roth

First, thanks for the effort. Sure, I’ll try what you suggest and see what I can come up with.

Or you can move those you don’t use too often to an external drive. I do that because my deployment machine is a laptop with an SSD.
The image info remains on the FOG database, so if you need the image again, just copy it back.

Something is wrong with your sysprep settings and/or answer file (if you use one).
I used this same process many times and never had this issue:

Install windows on one system. During install, I created a temp account (without a password), to use for the setup process. Installed all the apps.
Ran sysprep and rebooted in audit mode. Deleted the temp account and ran sysprep again with a custom unattend.xml file. The system shuts down.
Capture the entire drive with FOG.
Deploy to clients. Worked perfectly.

The strange thing in your case is the MAC address. That is something set in the network interface itself, so it should be different by default. Unless you explicitly changed it in Windows, before capture. But even if you did that, sysprep should remove that setting.

Review your steps carefully, something is wrong there. Outline your steps in detail here, maybe I can spot the issue.

In the beginning I used group multicast but since people here have the bad habit of moving computers around between labs, I gave up managing groups.
Now I just join them to a multicast session.

Another advantage of the multicast session join is that I see how many computers can actually join and set up the session for that particular number of computers.

It happened to me in the past, when using group multicast, that one (or more) computer(s) had cable issues and was unable to join, so the session didn’t start because not all group members joined.

Our university networks are poorly maintained. And now that I have to take care of them, I run into all sorts of issues.
It happened many times that I connected a bunch of computers to a multicast session, started the session only to see that one of the computers had a faulty cable and it connected only at 10Mbps. So the deployment took something like 8 hours. I had to leave it overnight.

Would it be very complicated to display the connection speed on, for example, the multicast login page? That way, before starting the multicast, I can quickly review connection speeds and replace the cable if needed.

Thanks.

@Sebastian-Roth
Yes, problem solved. The error is gone (sorry for the bad photo):
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZhWkYuHLTwndZBZPA

Thanks!

@Sebastian-Roth
Good. I’ll do the testing tomorrow and let you know.

@Sebastian-Roth
Sure. I’ll do it tomorrow and post the screenshot.

Done testing and I can confirm that AOMEI Backupper causes the problem.

I re-captured the image using dism, injected the install.wim into the install media, installed from it (essentially allowing Windows installer to re-create the EFI and MS reserved partitions) and now the restore works perfectly.

This error still appears:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7UWrM7y2dNgELa8E9

But it has no negative impact on capture or restore.

So, the bottom line is that, from now on, I won’t capture any drives that were restored with AOMEI.

AOMEI is a very good free tool, I’ll still use it but only for images that go to the final user, not images that are captured for deployment.

@Sebastian-Roth
Unfortunately I saw you message too late. I re-imaged my FOG server so I cannot copy the files (I have a dual boot laptop as deployment machine and had some issues with Windows, so I had to re-image).
But I’ll test again and send you the files.

The OS is Windows but I am going to set up a dual boot in the next few days, that is why I chose Linux in the image settings (I wanted to use the same image).

But I think I know who is to blame for the problem: AOMEI Backupper. I had a backup made with it and restored it, checking the feature that aligns the partitions on SSDs. And I believe that messed up the size of the partition.

I’m going to work on this issue on Monday and let you know how it goes.

I did capture the same drive with AOMEI Backupper and restored it without any problems.

Captured and tried to restore again. Same error.
But I noticed an error during capture:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/okdKKieQ4HgYaUHo9

@Sebastian-Roth
Ok, I will. Thanks.

@Sebastian-Roth

Yes, I stopped all existing tasks. But I’ll check again when I do the next deploy.

No, I didn’t change the image settings at all. Just captured and restored.

I created an image with the following specs:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/GSeppMzFgPF7fAx1A

Captured, all good. I started a test restore and I get this:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XC4Fffhr9ZtCpK2T9

104 is not smaller than 104

Version 1.5.5

Re: Multicast not starting (again)

I am creating a new topic since my previous one on this issue is quite old.

I have a new deployment machine, fresh install and yet the problem is still there. The steps are simple:

Capture image (no problem).
Create multicast task (by using group or by creating multicast session, it doesn’t matter). Multicast doesn’t start.

But, if BEFORE creating the multicast task I run:
sudo service FOGMulticastManager restart

All works perfectly. Something happens with the FOGMulticastManager service during boot.

My OS is Ubuntu Desktop 18.04.