Deployment Solution

I have gotten capture/deploy to work but now I need to decide between pxe booting or using a boot disk for computers with blank hard drive.

This is on altiris 6.9 sp5 deploying windows 7 pro 64.

For xp, we always used boot disks but the method seems to have changed some.

I can make a boot iso and winpe will boot from it and it opens up the "administrator: DS WinPE2 x86 pre-boot automation enviroment" which is a cmd window. The Prompt is X:

At this point, I have not found what to do yet. 

Is this how booting from a disk should look and if so, what command would I call up to start the image restore?

It shouldn't be any different. Have you successfully created and used an Altiris bootdisk in the past? I haven't needed to create one for SP5 but have in SP4 (use PXE almost exclusively but once in a while I use them for VMs to speed things up). I can build one and see if there is a change but I imagine it should boot and then start the agent which then brokers the imaging and takes commands from the console.

with a CD boot you have to take the media out after imaging or os scripted install to reboot the machine or u will be brought back to winpe CD automation.  Not so with PXE.

Best practice,  in the DS console create a predefined computer either by giving a computer name and a name or by importing a CSV file. Then assign the jobs u want to the clients.    when theclient  boots press F8 to access winpe x86 or x64 and u could pick the computer name defined in the steps before and your automation job will start and u could move to a different client.

Either way, whatever works for u best right?  :)

Nelson V

Well we name all computers. So would I just create a task that I can then assign to whatever computer I need it on? What job would I choose and how would I build the job? for instance, my standard image job has a distribute software then distribute image followed by configure jobs.

It sounds like I have to have some sort of client already on the drive, I am doing this for completely blank drives.

I will suggest you to make use of  boot disks, as there is no change in boot disk in SP5 .

After booting into automation environment ,you are getting the prompt X:

It is just beacuse deployment share drive is not getting mapped in automation environment so you do one thing edit your Winpe image and changed drive letter to M or N (Should be greater drive letter )  Save image and try the same scenario again .

OR

Go to express\deployment server\default.cfg .

Open the default.cfg file and search mappath0 .

Change mappath0 to mappath7

Save the file and create new PXE image and try to boot into automation using this new image

Let me know if you need more information.

What is the idea behind changing the drive letter to m or n? We have 2 altiris deployments now that are older and they are set to f and L. How much does the letter matter and is there a way to find exactly what it should be?

What does changing the mappath to 7 do?

Just want to know what will happen just in case.

Well, I set it to L which was in the altiris deployment config and then I can still boot by disk.

I then have to type cd rdeploy\windows\redeploy.exe and I get the rdeploy to start.

It goes thru and images but the bcdedit issue happens. So I can work with this till I fix the bcdedit issue.

Idea behind changing the drive letter:

In order to access DS share (express deployment share) in automation environment we map a drive while creating PXE image through BDC. [ Step 6 of 12 : Network drive mapping] .

By default PXE maps express drive to letter F:

But the real problem occurs in automation when source computer have multiple partition say C,D and E.

In automation C becomes D, D becomes E and E becomes F.

As F letter id already allocated in automation PXE failed to map deployment share to F:

and hence it will show prompt X:                    ....................[ means fail to map depoyment share]

otherwise it will shows prompt F:                  ....................[ mean ssuccessfully mapped depoyment share]

What does changing the mappath to 7 do?

As i have mentioned in previous answer that "By default PXE maps express drive to letter F: ".

It is mentioned in default.cfg file by setting mappath0=\\Deployment-server-name\Express.

Here mappath0 means F:

If we change this to mappath7=\\Deployment-server-name\Express

Here mappath7 means M:

This is just to map drive to letter which is higher that F

Let me know if you need more information.

"Mark  As Solution If You Find The Information Helpful"