Deployment Solution

Since we are getting computers that will not work on WinPE 2.1 due to network drivers not been support and we are not ready to upgrade to 7.5, we decide to follow this article: http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO85100 which shows an upgrade steps to WinPE 4.0.

So I start to follow the Article and realize there is a lot of manual process and since this has to be done in all packages servers and SMP, and in an environment with more than 5 packages servers is enough to have some automation in place.

So I decide to write a PowerShell to take care of the manual steps.

Remember: this works on my environment, which means it might NOT works on yours, so I recommend you to look at the code before running. (This code has no warranty that will work)

Before running the code, there are couple checks you need to do:

• Check the PowerShell execution policy “Get-ExecutionPolicy”
• Case is not set, need to set the right execution policy: “Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted”
• If you want change back to the default after the code runs: “Set-ExecutionPolicy Restricted”
   
• Change the 4 variables on the begging of the code, to point to the right path locations
• $SymantecInstallFolder - Altiris Install locations
  • "C:\Program Files\Altiris"
     
• $DS_Download - Download files from Symantec
  • "C:\DS"
     
• $ADK - Microsoft Assessment and Deployment Kit Locations
  • "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\"
     
• $tempdir - Backup Folder Location
  • "C:\DSBackup"

I recommend running from the PowerShell interface:
 - Start > Accessories > Windows PowerShell > Windows PowerShell

The code will

• Check if you have admins rights to do all the modifications
• Check if all the paths necessary for the upgrade is in place
• Check if you have free space for the backup
• Backup the following Folder Locations
  • \Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\WAIK
  • \Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\bootwiz
  • \Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\ghost
  • \Altiris Agent\Agents\Deployment\Task Handler\SBS
  • \Deployment\Web\web.config
• Start the file/folders modifications
  • Copy the WAIK files to Symantec Folders
  • Copy the Download Files
  • Renaming
  • Copy Bootwiz and ghost files
  • Modified the web.config
  • Update the PXE

Once the code is done, you will need to modify the Bootwiz Drivers packages using the console (the info is on the Article http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO85100)

This code was done in couple hours so if there is improvements, please post so we can have this process as automated as possible :)