A Pretty Good Frontend (IMHO)

By arwidmark / August 25, 2007

Summer 2007 in Sweden is one for the record books, for being the rainiest one in a long time… So if you can’t hit the beach, what do you do?  Some serious coding of course! 🙂

So today I have released a Frontend for ZTI (BDD 2007) to the web…

Credits goes to Morgan Hjalmarsson, Sami Lehtonen, Martin Hultstrom and Kristoffer Lindblad for their efforts and continuous support…

Best Regards / Johan Arwidmark
Microsoft MVP – Setup & Deployment

The name: Pretty Good Frontend

Download link
http://www.deployvista.com/Repository/BDD2007/tabid/74/EntryId/36/DMXModule/400/Download/attachment/Default.aspx

Features
– Only appears if computer is not in the BDD Database already
– Allows for entering a computer name
– Allows for Selecting target OU (Selection list is from live Actice Directory data)
– Allows for entering UDDIR folder (for replace scenarios)
– Allows for OSD/ZTI Image selection (Selection list is from live SMS data)
– Allows for role selection (Selection list is from live BDD database)
– Configured from rules in bootstrap.ini, no hardcoded values in the Frontend
– Started as a userexit (no scripts on the winpe image)

The screenshot

System Requirements
– A Windows PE 2005 image generated from the BDD 2007 Deployment Workbench
– Added support for ADSI (not terribly hard, just copy activeds.tlb and adsldp.dll from Windows Server 2003 SP1 to System32)

Configuration
– From the download, copy the following files to ZTI$ Share: Z-Frontend.vbs and Z-Frontend.hta
– From the \distribution\scripts folder, copy the following files to ZTI$ Share: wizard.css and wizard.ico
– Using Deployment Workbench, update bootstrap.ini using info from the sample files and update the Deployment Point (Update files only)
– I’m assuming your are running the BDD database on the SMS SiteServer (SMS Database)

The following values need to be configured in bootstrap.ini (sample for single and multiple locations included)

SMSSiteDatabaseServer:  The Server name of the SMS SiteServer (database)
SMSSiteDatabaseName:  The SMS database name
DomainController1:  A domain controller to bind to
BDDDataBaseName:  The BDD dataabase name
StartingOU:   OU to list subOUs from (1 level only)
ListADUserName:  User to Bind with AD
ListADPassword:  Password for AD user

Note 1: Minimum Memory requirement is set to 256, you shouldn’t deploy windows XP or higher versions with less, nor use WinPE 2005… 🙂

Note 2: If you have used Microsoft sample file (SERVERSP1-REMOVELIST.TXT) to reduce WinPE 2005 size, make sure you configure it to not delete the following

files

system32\mfc42.dll
system32\odbc32.dll
system32\odbcint.dll
system32\urlmon.dll
system32\security.dll
System32\scecli.dll
System32\shdocvw.dll
System32\msls31.dll

Note 3: As for usual I recommend configuring winbom.ini to always wipe the disk (otherwise leftover junk may prevent the setup)

Sample winbom.ini

[Factory] WinBOMType=WinPE
Reseal=No
[WinPE] Quiet=Yes
Restart=No
[PnPDriverUpdate] [PnPDrivers] [NetCards] [UpdateInis] [FactoryRunOnce] [Branding] [AppPreInstall] [DiskConfig]
Disk1 = Disk1.Config

[Disk1.Config]
WipeDisk = Yes
Size1 = *
PartitionType1 = Primary
FileSystem1 = NTFS
QuickFormat1 = Yes
SetActive1 = Yes

 

About the author

arwidmark

Kingskawn - November 19, 2008

Superb guide you made here. But what would you do when you receive a machine or several machines where the only thing you know about them are the MAC addresses?

How can you launch this? It’s based on the computername and you can’t put a mac address for deployment or am I missing something 🙂

cortez00 - April 16, 2009

Johan
i think i asked this before.. will this work for MDT 2007 and SCCM. I thought you mentioned that you where working on it.

Kingskawn - April 22, 2009

Is this compatible with SCCM? What do we have to change that is more for sms to a SCCM scenario?

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