Posts made by St.Nikolai

Because the OOBE experience is actually required for windows to properly adjust to a machine’s hardware, if you want to add software to a windows machine fresh out of the box without even going through with OOBE (which keeps your re-arm count from going to high) I HIGHLY suggest going through with the windows install until asked for a computer name and username, at this point if you hit CTRL+SHIFT+F3 your system will reboot into AUDIT mode, Sysprep will pop up when windows logs in. At this point choose “Enter system audit mode” for the first option and “quit” for the second and hit OK, Sysprep will take a few moments to close and once it’s gone you can do with the system what you will (Drivers, Software, even populating C:/Users/Default/Desktop with any shortcuts the client may need). At this point you can run windows updates (IT IS OK IF YOU NEED TO RESTART YOUR PC FOR UPDATES THIS WILL NOT DAMAGE ANYTHING AS LONG AS YOU CHOSE QUIT IN SYSPREP AS I STATED ABOVE, YOU WILL ONLY HAVE TO REPEAT CHOOSING AUDIT MODE AND QUIT EVERY TIME THE PC RESTARTS) after finishing with EVERYTHING you would like to exist on the computer restart once more, now that we have everything we need we can set it to run OOBE at last, Sysprep will pop up as always under System cleanup action choose “Enter System out-of-box-experience”, and check the generalize box, and for the second option choose reboot and hit OK, the computer will now reboot when the BIOS starts hit whatever key you need to access the boot menu, queue your host to upload the image in the FOG web GUI and boot it to the NIC, this SHOULD pull the image just fine and negate MOST issues everyone seems to be having! Apologies for the multipost…

Edit: Never mind, using FogPrep seemed to get the single disk resizable to actually pull both partitions on my virtual box, still researching more before just wiping my recovery drive… I’m just concerned about the “Active” tag on the Dell partition, as from what I’m told that’s where the boot.ini is stored, even though my C drive has a “Boot” tag…I wonder what Microsoft was thinking when they developed the naming scheme…I’m going to attempt uploading an image off the real computer with Fogprep this time to see if it’ll finally work
Update: Even after using FogPrep the image fails to deploy, now it can’t even start to even see windows, it just says “A disk read error occurred” right after the dell load screen. HOWEVER FogPrep did indeed pull both partitions like I was going for! I need to find a new Win7 disk, these OEM Dell disks seem to keep trying to put on these stupid recovery partitions and don’t even get me my drivers back…Jayphizzle seems to be right, it is best to remove the OEM recovery partition and use a FRESH Win7 install and finding the drivers yourself…I’ll try installing in Audit mode as I’m running out of options…
I really don’t remember this being nearly so difficult when I was imaging 20 laptops at a time in Fog 0.32…
Update2: Realized the whole time I was forgetting to put the computer back into OOBE mode. The image I made in Audit mode works like a charm! just like the good old days! Just ironing out the last of my configurations now and I’ll be happily back to deploying images like no tomorrow!

I believe this one may be easier to read and a little more direct apologies for the double post but I can’t upload 2 PDFs in the same post

[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1556_Installing Fog 2.pdf?:”]Installing Fog 2.pdf[/url]

[CENTER]Included with this thread are 2 documents of my design both containing instructions for installing Fog on a CentOS 6.x machine[/CENTER]
[CENTER]Both of the documents are relatively the same however there are some wording differences, I tried to post them as text in this post but the Spam blocker is currently preventing me from posting it as such, apologies for making you download a PDF file or two![/CENTER]

[CENTER][B]Please let me know if this does not work for you or you are confused I am not used to writing tutorials and will elaborate this further if I must and I have included my own personal Word Document describing the steps I used, as I stated above I wrote this guide and have used it to flawlessly install fog at least twice for each version included in this guide and I apologize if it does not work for you! [/B][/CENTER]
[CENTER] [/CENTER]
[CENTER][B]I’ve been using Fog since version 0.32 to deploy Win 7 images across an entire business re-imaging around 20 computers at a time and using OPSI to push updates and extra software we need (without having to update the image) to fully automate the new computer set-up process for our employees[/B][/CENTER]

[url=“/_imported_xf_attachments/1/1555_Installing Fog.pdf?:”]Installing Fog.pdf[/url]

I seem to be having a similar issue with Fog 1.2 on a CentOS 6.6 machine, from what I’m seeing when I set my image for “Single Disk - Resizable” it picks the 5GB system restore partition my Win 7 Pro OEM disks automatically drop in instead, I’m assuming this is because it is first on the disk before my actual OS’s partition? My systems use 250GB HDDs, when I use the “Multiple Partition Single Drive - Not Resizable” option it finds both of the partitions just fine, but I’d prefer to use the resizable option in case if there are any differences in my drive sizes. I was wondering is there a way for me to choose exactly which partition Fog uploads (I noticed this mentioned in the possible features for 1.2)? And if it can’t should I just delete the partition the windows disk put on there? (I just want to be safe before I destroy vital system info, also as I write this I am uploading the full not resizable image just in case, loving the 2 hour wait time for a drive that size! =D)

P.S. I have avidly been using fog since (I believe) version 0.32B for the business I work for to deploy Win 7 Images with our required software packages and don’t remember running into these problems. I’ve written full tutorials on how to install versions 0.32, 1.01, and 1.2 on CentOS 6.4-6.6 machines. We’re using Fog to deploy the initial image and the German program OPSI to actually push updates/extra software packages after Fog images our systems for a fully automated mass imaging solution! You developers have made my life a lot easier, thank you for your support!