Deployment Solution

Using Altiris 6.9 SP5.  Clients are all Windows 7 x64.

Almost weekly, I have an issue with computers that are already in my console that show up as a new computer.  Same SN, but the MAC address is different all of the sudden.  Most of my PCs here are laptops, so i'm guessing it's the difference between ethernet and wireless... But shouldn't the computer record know both the MAC addresses??

I've also set the primary lookup key to ONLY SN, and that doesn't seem to have any effect really.  In fact i've noticed even more of an issue while imaging new computers since i've changed that.  Today i switched back to SN and MAC address and i still had someone's computer re-appear as a new computer in the console today.  So i have no clue what's causing this behavior.

Anyone else run into this?  I need this to stop!  it's screwing up my users when they come in and see their computers at the WinPE screen because their computer PXE booted when it started up.

Thanks for any input.

Wireless trouble:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO4045

Thanks for the link... however, that will be hard to implement if i do the MAC addresses, i'd have to have every wireless MAC of every laptop.

On a side note, I've also seen this on desktop computers, however it's not nearly as common.

Yep, we had this a LOT, and you're pretty much stuck. DS has a list you can customise (within the settings for each agent, on each computer) that is meant to remove virtual network adapters (from VirtualPC, VMWare, etc), but misses some like VirtualBox, Himachi, etc. It also shows any dual-NIC systems, Bluetooth adapters, Firewire adapters, and more. Controlling what it reports is a nightmare. The only real option is to remove "MAC" from the primary key, but that causes BCD errors when imaging computers using WinPE.

What you could try, although still not ideal, is running Serial Number and UUID. That combination will get around most of the issues with the BCD errors (you'll stillg et some you'll need to play with), but it does appear to fix the duplicates. You will need to manually delete the inactive duplicate though.

I find it's usually best to not use the MAC as your Primary Lookup Key (for many reasons such as multiple nic's, docking stations, etc.).  We use Serial Number and it is pretty reliable.  The key there is to make sure that whenever your equipment is serviced by a technician (i.e. HP, Dell, etc.), that if they change the system board the serial number is put back into the BIOS.

MurrayW is spot on about having to delete the duplicates.

Regarding the BCD errors, I'm finding that this happens more if you have multiple PXE servers and this can be resolved if you regularly restart the PXE services on the PXE server.

I use Serial Number and MAC as primary lookup. PXE boot works great.

There was a time when we only used Serial Number, but sometimes the Altiris Client would not properly read the BIOS and we'd get duplicates. The Serial Number field would get populated with a MAC address-like entry. It wasn't the MAC address either. Once I added MAC address to primary lookup, all duplicate entries stopped.

You do have to watch the repair techs when they replace a motherboard when using Serial Number only.

I once had an issue when i used a primary key that was not supported by the clients BIOS ... PXE treated them all as "unknown computers".