Deployment Solution

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ds-69-sp5-mr2-preconfigured-computers-randomly-appearing

the problem with preconfigured computers randomly appearing (described in thread above) is still happening.  if anyone has any suggestions, i'm all ears.  

short version for those who don't want to re-read the above thread:  preconfigured computers are randomly appearing in the console.  by itself that isn't a problem, but when you boot a machine to winPE, it then gives you a popup menu telling you to select a preconfigured computer.  if you cancel that, it quits out of winpe.  if you don't cancel, it doesn't add itself to the DS console so you can't assign a job to it.  the only solution i've found is to sit there and scroll thru the list in the "pick a computer" drop-down then delete them, 3 at a time, from the DS console.  this is tedious, time-consuming and very annoying.  i've also noticed that all these preconfigured computers are duplicate entries of existing machines, but that not all of them have the yellow "preconfigured" icon, so i end up deleting all instances of the duplicates, and then just letting the "real" PC phone home on its own and re-add itself to the console.  

is there a way i can create a filter or some sort of search in DS that will let me find all preconfigured computers and delete them all at once directly in the console?

DS 6.9 doesnt have pre-configured computers as far as I am aware, as it has virtual computers which are similar to 7.x's pre-configured ones. Virtual computers can either be manually created or created via a csv import from what I can remember.

What names do these yellow icon'd (virtual cpmputer icon) have?

we name everything by its serial number/service tag, and that's exactly how these show up.  they are indeed called preconfigured computers in 6.9.  i'm not familiar with ds 7.x since i only tried using it for a few months before giving up and reverting to 6.x since 7.1 just wasn't ready for prime time in the time frame we needed it.  but that's past history.

 

anyway, here's the really weird part about this.  nobody is manually creating these, nor is anyone importing a CSV.  i'm one of two people with access to the console and neither of us is doing that.  besides - why would we intentionally import duplicate computers?  i've seen the same computer name listed as many as 6 times in the all computers list.  

another weird factor is that they aren't always yellow - most times they're just gray/offline.  they never show any job history (which makes sense for a preconfigured machine).  in cases where it's listed 4+ times in the console, it's often listed 2+ times in the winpe preconfigured computer drop-down list. 

right now the only method i've found for "quick" deletion of these machines is to pxe boot a VM on my pc, then click the drop down to show the first three, then open the ds console in another window on the host pc, delete those 3, scroll in winpe, delete the next 3, etc etc etc.  not fun.

at this point i'd even be willing to do a sql query directly on the DB to purge these annoyances.  just gotta find what table and value to look for so i don't nuke the entire DB. ;)

It would be good to know when these duplicates are being created as that would help identify the cause. How many primary lookup keys are enabled?

I wonder when virtual computers were changed to pre-configured computers then??

As you don't have a Tools menu at the moment, you could simply execute the del_inactive_computers stored procedure.

I have a tools menu again thanks to the registry fix posted in my other thread. tried to run dsinfo but it asks for an existing DSI file, which i don't know if i even have one.  if i tell it not to open a dsi file, the program freezes and i end up having to end task on it. 

i'd rather not purge all inactives, as we do have a fair amount of machines that only sporadically connect, and i don't want to have to wait for them to come back into the console again for the next time i assign another mass job to everything (which we do at least once a month to push out new msword templates)

if i knew when they were being created i could probably keep it clean or find the source myself, but with ~2000 machines in there, i don't notice when a new machine pops in unless it happens to be at the top of the list AND has a yellow icon. i only notice it when i need to boot to winpe and it gives me the preconfigured computers popup.

2 PLUs are checked - UUID and serial.  in theory that shouldn't allow dupes but it does.  

This will delete computers that havent sent inventory data within 30 days; however, using the DS's option of deleting inactive machines will most likely do the same thing:

DELETE from computer 
WHERE datediff(dd,last_inventory,getdate())>30

You havent said what DS 6.9 build you are running, so perhaps this will help if it matches your build:-  http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH39712

we already use the option to auto delete machines after 30 days of inactivity. when you first said del inactive, i thought you meant delete all machines that were'nt actively talking at that moment. thing is, i think preconfigured machines are exempt from the 30day autopurge. which kinda makes sense from an admin standpoint.

pretty sure we're on 6.9 sp5 mr2, but that's just from memory - i'm at home, posting from my phone right now (excuse the typos) - so unfortunately that article doesn't apply. we had a case w/ symantec last year (before maint expired in january) trying to solve the multiple duplicate computers, and changing PLU to just uuid and serial helped a lot. having mac selected doesn't make sense since all laptops have at least 2 macs. we still get dupes now and then but nowhere near as bad or as often as before. we used to get 6-8 copies of lots of machines. at one point in time, we actually completely rebuilt ds from scratch after support made some mistakes. the only thing i kept was to export all my jobs from the old and reimport them to the new. we even made a whole new db so the old one would still be available if needed (it wasn't). seems like what i'm trying to do shouldn't be such a big deal but i guess i've found something not many folks want to do - purge what are normally manually created or bulk imported computers. if there was a way to filter/search for them just like you can do say, simple search for so many other variables, this would be an easy fix - i'd create a saved search for them so i can wipe em out in one move and get on with my work.