@Tom-Elliott Ah ok cool, I wasn’t sure if that other person had the same thing. Glad you were able to catch this, great work!
Any chance we can tie this into defaulting the hostname change during full registration rather than ticking a checkbox on the host under AD settings? Just a thought - thanks again!
@lukebarone I am having the same issue after an install to RC-9 today. I can’t do the full registration either. Here is what I am seeing:
When selecting full registration, the machine scrolls through the following new messages, and then prompts to enter in the computer information (just like usual) then instead of immediately imaging after taking inventory, it reboots, and registers the computers under a different name than what I provided in the registration (sometimes the MAC, sometimes random characters). Then it boots back to the PXE after the registration and never actually deploys the image.
If I select the iPXE menu item to Deploy Image, it prompts for username and password, I can select the image, it shows the same new messages below, but then actually deploys the image successfully.
Happy to help troubleshoot or provide logs, etc.
Thanks for the tip @george1421 I’m not sure it works for the scenario I am working on, but none the less, good idea for future items too, more than just name changes.
@Wayne-Workman hey, thanks for the information back. Sorry, I am certainly not trying to be a PITA for you guys, this product is awesome 
I do like the idea of having it automatically enabled during the full registration, or maybe allowing a setting that would make it automatic during full registration in case not everyone likes it. Also, totally understand the instantaneous name change part. That explains the reboot just fine and you are right, it would be normal to reboot at that time, just making sure that is what it was.
Thanks again, happy to help test certain features out.
@Wayne-Workman Yes, sorry, I thought I had this in my notes. Not adding these machines to a Domain, just imaging on a workgroup. But yes, we have the same issue at my company, +/- 5 minutes of the DC’s time or else Kerberos authentication will block domain activity. Sadly, not joining one here.
So I tested that checkbox and it looks like it worked. But, it didn’t work during the initial setup. Also, its a little tricky because that checkbox isn’t available until the host is registered with the server. So in my example, I am doing a full registration, which means it isn’t on the server at all. When I do the full registration, then I would need to go in and check that box for all of my devices, and if I’m doing a bunch of machines, it would be a little annoying. That’s why I wasn’t sure if there was a way around this.
Something new that happened during this deployment, with that checkbox ticked, was it booted to the OS, I was able to work in there for about 2 minutes, and then the computer randomly rebooted. I can’t remember if it changed the name during that time, or if it had done it earlier. I’ll test this a bit, but would love to know if there was a way to get it to do the hostname change without having a domain or without having to check that box on each machine on the server.
Thanks all, this product is awesome!
Thanks, yes, I saw the client setup with sysprep. I confirmed it is disabled before I take the sysprep, and enable it in setupcomplete. I know this is working, because the windows 7 key is activating.
I just checked the FOG settings and saw the experimental feature that changes the hostname early. I unchecked this and deployed an image, but that didn’t change the issue.
The Administrative username I use for the computers is DRSAdmin. The computer names are: DRSAdmi-xxxxxx (perhaps some sort of serial), but those are all random.
Below are the logs, you can see in my most recent test (not 1:55 am, its a VM and the time is off which I don’t think is the issue because it happens on laptops too)
You can see the computer name: DRSADMI-FTJ0QC3
Then below in the “Hostname Changer” log section, that same log repeats itself every 2 minutes, along with a few other items, but this is the one I’m most interested in. Curious to see if others have this issue.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------UserTracker---------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Client-Info Client Version: 0.11.5
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Client-Info Client OS: Windows
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Client-Info Server Version: 1.3.0-RC-8
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Middleware::Response Success
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Middleware::Communication URL: http://fog/fog/service/usertracking.report.php?action=login&user=DRSADMI-FTJ0QC3\Student&mac=00:0C:29:CE:06:7A||00:00:00:00:00:00:00:E0|00:00:00:00:00:00:00:E0&newService&json
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Middleware::Communication URL: http://fog/fog/management/index.php?sub=requestClientInfo&configure&newService&json
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Middleware::Response Success
9/3/2016 1:54 AM Service Sleeping for 81 seconds
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Communication URL: http://fog/fog/management/index.php?sub=requestClientInfo&mac=00:0C:29:CE:06:7A||00:00:00:00:00:00:00:E0|00:00:00:00:00:00:00:E0&newService&json
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Response Success
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Communication URL: http://fog/fog/service/getversion.php?clientver&newService&json
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Communication URL: http://fog/fog/service/getversion.php?newService&json
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Service Creating user agent cache
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Response Invalid time
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Response No Printers
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Response Module is disabled globally on the FOG server
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------HostnameChanger-------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Client-Info Client Version: 0.11.5
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Client-Info Client OS: Windows
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Client-Info Server Version: 1.3.0-RC-8
9/3/2016 1:55 AM Middleware::Response Success
9/3/2016 1:55 AM HostnameChanger Users still logged in and enforce is disabled, delaying any further actions
------------------------------------------------------------------------------```Hey all, minor issue but searched around and couldn’t find a fix from any recent thread.
I am booting a laptop to the iPXE and doing the full host registration step. Which is really nice because I can apply a lot of settings before imaging!
I give the computer a hostname, windows key, etc. When I deploy the image, it changes the key and activates no problem, but the hostname doesn’t change. The unattend file doesn’t specify a hostname either. The log for fog on the C drive says under the Hostname Changer section that the key is correct, activated and nothing else to do.
The host on the fog server sees the hostname that I give it during registration.
I checked the command: hostname, and the hostname in the registry and they all show the same thing that the System properties show (which is a randomly generated name).
Running Fog 1.3.0 RC8 on Centos 7.
Appreciate any help and support.
Thanks, yes, I didn’t even have it installed until last night, and I did disable it and have it re-enable in the new system. I like 1.3 because it shows up as a pending host automatically which is awesome. Just need to get name changing working from the Fog server and I’ll be set.
Thanks again everyone!
Ok, so I am about to shove rusted forks into my eyeballs. In short, this issue is resolved, but I don’t know what it is.
Whilst waiting and testing, I decided to take some time and work on polishing my reference image. I installed the fog client, a couple of other applications. I changed my unattend.xml to activate the built in administrator account, gave it a password, and did some other small adjustments to a SetupComplete file that didn’t exist in the first place, because I didn’t think it needed to be there if it didn’t serve much purpose at the time, especially for just a blank OS to be dropped.
Anyway, thank you all for your help and knowledge through this process. Feel free to mark solved, or at least solved (not a FOG issue).
@Avaryan Thank you, sometimes the simple answers are easiest to forget 
@george1421 Ok, Tried these steps, and no matter what, it still threw the error at the end.
Good news out of all of this is I finally got a full log file in the Panther folder that shows items from today. It has several hundred lines, so I would rather not paste it here to avoid a lengthy post, anyway I can upload it here?
Sounds good, pasted below.
Not sure if this would matter, but I selected all of the images to be Single disk, resizable every time, but since windows 7 has that 100 mb partition up front, would that cause an issue here? I went ahead and created an image for multi parition non resizable and am capturing and will deploy later on tonight. I noticed when I booted my test VM that the hard drive was nearly full at almost 9 gigs when I had originally given it 45. So I’m wondering if something happened there. Also, since it was a VM, I was booting originally from the ISO from the datastore, and I forgot to disconnect and remove the ISO connection before capturing. I’ll try removing this as well and re-capturing in a few different formats and redeploying to see if one of those (either partitions or iso/dvd) was causing some problems while you all review the task list Thanks again!
Image Name PID Session Name Session# Mem Usage Status User Name CPU Time Window Title
========================= ======== ================ =========== ============ =============== ================================================== ============ ========================================================================
System Idle Process 0 Services 0 24 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:03:18 N/A
System 4 Services 0 604 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:07 N/A
smss.exe 232 Services 0 1,092 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
csrss.exe 308 Services 0 3,592 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
wininit.exe 336 Services 0 4,368 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
csrss.exe 352 Console 1 4,048 K Running NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
winlogon.exe 384 Console 1 5,716 K Running NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 FirstUXWnd
services.exe 436 Services 0 8,180 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
lsass.exe 460 Services 0 10,448 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
lsm.exe 468 Services 0 3,604 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 580 Services 0 8,872 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 652 Services 0 6,332 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
windeploy.exe 728 Console 1 8,388 K Running NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 Install Windows
sppsvc.exe 824 Services 0 10,740 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 0:00:01 N/A
svchost.exe 864 Services 0 42,704 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 888 Services 0 33,628 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:02 N/A
svchost.exe 924 Services 0 13,156 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 108 Services 0 10,784 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 316 Services 0 29,184 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
spoolsv.exe 1116 Services 0 4,060 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 1144 Services 0 12,144 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
WmiPrvSE.exe 1856 Services 0 8,668 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 1912 Services 0 7,720 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE 0:00:00 N/A
SearchIndexer.exe 1976 Services 0 23,028 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
SearchProtocolHost.exe 1252 Services 0 7,316 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
SearchFilterHost.exe 1204 Services 0 4,620 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
cmd.exe 1612 Console 1 2,924 K Running NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 Administrator: C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe - tasklist /v
conhost.exe 1000 Console 1 4,832 K Running NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 OleMainThreadWndName
TrustedInstaller.exe 1708 Services 0 20,612 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:03 N/A
VSSVC.exe 1760 Services 0 12,244 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
svchost.exe 1972 Services 0 5,472 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
tasklist.exe 2248 Console 1 5,508 K Unknown NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM 0:00:00 N/A
@Wayne-Workman Agreed, hoping to find something that is hung that can be fixed. I redeployed the image that gets through oobe without hanging, but after I do answer all of the initial questions (Name, EULA, timezone, etc) and then it prepares windows and goes to a black screen and shows the original error message: Windows could not complete the installation…"
I did the Shift f10 and pushed tasklist to a text file as soon as I saw the error appear. I’ll attach that here.
I went to the Panther file and found the 3 files that were modified at the time that I dropped the image. There were a few files in there from a few days ago, so I found these in the IE folder under Panther.
Scratch that, I apparently don’t have enough privileges to upload a file here, can this be granted or is there a better way you would rather have me share these text files?
The Setupact.log file under Panther only had this for today, the reset of the items are dated for 2 days ago:
2016-08-28 16:50:40, Info [IE sysprep provider] Sysprep_Specialize_IE entered
2016-08-28 16:50:40, Info [SetIEInstalledDate LIB] SetIEInstalledDate() Setting IE Installed Date
2016-08-28 16:50:40, Info [SetIEInstalledDate LIB] On 64-bit OS: Setting IE Installed Date values
2016-08-28 16:50:40, Info [IESetup LIB] Calling CAdjustPrivilege constructor arg: SeRestorePrivilege
2016-08-28 16:50:40, Info [IESetup LIB] Calling CAdjustPrivilege constructor arg: SeRestorePrivilege
2016-08-28 16:50:40, Info [IE sysprep provider] Sysprep_Specialize_Shell exit
Nothing popped out at me on the tasklist, but happy to paste it or upload it.
Haven’t gotten around to the other troubleshooting steps from George, trying those later tonight.
@Tom-Elliott Thanks for this, I had seen this as well through other forums, especially with AVG. Sadly, I don’t have this or any other AV installed during these tests, but solid note and something to look for for sure in the future, or as @Wayne-Workman mentioned, checking the process on the hang up. I’ll look to do that as well. I’m hoping I can find something that will be easily scriptable to kill because, it doesn’t do me a lot of good to look it up each time on a machine if a reboot will fix it anyway, which means scripting in a reboot would be just as effective here, just doesn’t answer the question of ‘why’ it happens.
@george1421 I’ll take a look at those deployment ideas, and get back once I have done them and report my findings.
Thanks all, have a good one!
Ok, good information here. I went ahead and walked through the oobe settings of my reference image and it did everything perfectly. It went through its setup, checked all of the services, installed all of the devices and settings, then rebooted, went into the user config, made me create a user, accept the EULA, set the timezone, and windows updates. Then went to finalizing windows settings (note: just after this, it would then go to a black screen to and show the error) however, this went right to the login screen and allowed me to select my two users. So, I’m starting to lean towards a fog capture or deploy issue at this point. Since the reference image hasn’t changed.
No fog client, no sysprep file no setupcomplete file, etc. Literally just plain old windows 7 SP1 x64 - seriously, like the original install, still with IE8 (no updates, and don’t worry, it would do it even if it had updates ). But yeah, I’m at a small loss here. I can work on digging through the panther logs in a bit, but wanted to post this progress as well. Thanks again!
Ok, good call on that, I’ll sysprep the reference image. Yes, I always take a snapshot before sysprepping so I can go back. But I’ll see if fog is causing the issue that way or not. Maybe its the way I’m capturing and deploying the image. Since I’m building it from the iso, it might create 2 partitions for the boot environment, but I am telling fog to create an image that is 1 partition and make it expandable. Haven’t looked into that yet.
I’ll test that out and look through some of the logs and let you know. Thanks!
Thanks guys for the help, but I wanted to clarify a line in my original post that may change your answers slightly. I referenced that the issue may have been caused by the FOG service trying to start, or not being disabled in the reference image. However, I don’t have the FOG client installed at all on the reference image, I wanted to rule things out and I don’t have that in there, so therefore, no need to start it using the SetupComplete.cmd. Do you believe that me not having that client in the reference image could be causing this to take place?
I have watched the image drop process from the moment that FOG says the cloning is complete, all the way through the windows boot process and the setup and it doesn’t reboot at all, it does all of the system setup and configs and services, and then gets to the error I mentioned in the header. The full message (no picture at the moment) is “Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer, restart the installation.”
I do use a VM and take a snapshot prior to doing sysprep so that I can revert, make changes and keep working. What logs should I look at in the panther folder? When I try to open them, I get Access is denied when I am logged in as an administrator (but not the ‘administrator’ built in user).
Also, I’m not using any drivers or any pointers to drivers since I am going to a fully functioning VM with full drivers installed, to another VM on the same machine. I mostly get the ‘checking video performance’ when I use a sysprep file, but again, it just hangs there, and a reboot resolves the issue. I’m happy if that is my final solution, albeit a little annoying, but I can handle that.
Thanks again, and hope the clarification brings light to this.
Hey all, I have been scouring this site and the web for this error over the past few days and not finding a solid answer. I have a slightly more unusual error that I have yet to see referenced by any of the forums or posts that I have found.
In most scenarios people are booting their computers after Fog drops the image, it goes through the standard Windows is preparing this computer for first boot, etc, and then they receive this error. When they reboot the error returns. Several solutions for this have been:
And there are a few others I’m forgetting I’m sure, but whats unusual about my setup, is if I reboot my computer at this stage (or press OK to reboot) then it boots into the OS without error or issue. I don’t believe there is a forum out there that describes this behavior, because if I try the steps above, after I try them, the next step is to reboot, which I know will fix the issue, so its not a great answer.
I am running FOG 1.3.0 -RC8 on Centos 7. This is on a Windows 7 x64 image.
I am using an ESXi box to create a VM that houses my ‘base image’. I booted to the ISO, installed windows 7, booted up, entered Audit mode, created a local admin for my purposes (and perhaps this is what I should avoid and let sysprep do this) and that was pretty much it. Since I had seen these issues after several hours of perfecting a base image, just to watch it get errors, I stopped doing all of the windows 7 updates and left it as plain as possible.
I register my VM with FOG and capture the image. I then create another VM, boot it to PXE and deploy that image to it.
In one trial I used an unattend file that I created using WAIK. This has seen errors such as the computer hanging on “Setup is checking Video performance” and then displaying the same error (or not, sometimes it would just check video performance for several hours), ultimately a reboot would make it go to windows, no problem.
I then decided to sysprep without a unattend file, thinking there was an error in there somewhere. Started with my plain base image, sysprepped it, captured, and deployed it. It pushed quickly, made me do the oobe setup (as expected), at the end of it, setup went to a black screen and did some final services and setup items (again, as expected) and then up popped the same error about not being able to complete the installation, and yet again, a reboot solved the issue. Going crazy because there is an issue, that isn’t actually an issue!
Would love to hear if others have had this, or solved it, I don’t mind syspreppging the image over and over with an updated unattend file and trying that as well, or even if adding a shutdown /r /t 0 in a setupcomplete (assuming this script runs around that time), which I am not currently using because i have had these issues and wanted to keep this as clean as possible.
As always, thanks for the advice and support.
Posting a bug from a previous thread: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/8333/wipe-and-image-from-pxe
What we ended up finding was that the Normal wipe procedures take about 30 minutes to run on a VM. I’m not sure if this is typical behavior, but it takes about 15 minutes for a Full wipe to run and it shows the progress along the way. I would assume that the Normal wipe would be about 1/4th the amount of time.
When doing a normal wipe, the boot process hangs here:
It does wipe the drive ultimately.
So it could be that the Normal wipe is messed up in two regards (taking a super long time and showing no progress) OR the Full wipe which does show progress is much faster than it should be and isn’t doing an actual full wipe. Happy to help where I can, thanks for looking into this.
@Wayne-Workman Agreed, I figured I should file it as a bug anyway. Thanks for the help here. I’ll post shortly regarding this.