I've had a freeze on any changes in my Deployment system while our Windows 7 deployment was in progress. It is now complete! HAZAA!!
So I headed off to my lab to catch up on a couple Deployment updates:
1. Integrate new Dell Ultralight laptop E7440 (quick test showed I'd need to add a new PE NIC driver and create new WinPE images)
2. Upgrade my ImageInvoker installation (Thanks Ian!)
I quickly found out that the E7440 has the new Intel i218 Ethernet adapter and that they are not making Windows Vista (WinPE 2.0 compatible) drivers for it!!! WHAT?! A quick check with Symantec and, no, WinPE 3 or 4 is not available yet for Deployment Solution 6.9 - but a new update - Patch 6 - is due out immenently and will provide WinPE 4.0 support! After waiting impatiently for Symantec to release it, it finally comes out for GA the day before Thanksgiving! (Thanks Symantec!)
Backup current installation and jobs, download Windows 8 ADK, download and install SP6 - fails on ADK (WinPE) installation. Poke at it a bit and realize that Win8 ADK requires Server 2008 or higher! Wait a minute - when did DS6.9 start supporting Server 2008, let alone REQUIRE it?!? Would have been something nice to include in the requirements documention!
New virtual server spun up with Server 2008 R2 SP1. New database created on SQL2012 cluster. Install DS6.9SP6 and Win8ADK. (a little stumbling with the WinPE image creation still, but got it going by installing ADK locally, then choosing to create my WinPE image from a pre-installed instance by running BootWiz (something you can't do during setup)
Add Windows 8 32-bit drivers for the newer network cards into my WinPE image and it seems to work - boots into the WinPE environment and sits at the DAgent screen - now to add my ImageInvoker menu back!
Install ImageInvoker 1.0 and regenerate WinPE images. Check startup for menu.bat - no luck :(
Easy enough fix, Add files, browse to eXpress\Bootwiz\Include\WINPE2\SHARED and add Startup folder (can also just make a copy of WINPE2 folder and name it WINPE4)
Rebuild menus from DS Tools menu - error finding MSCOMCTL.ocx
Search Windows - sure enough, Windows Server 2008 doesn't have that control. Find it in ImageInvoker install directory (eXpress\ImageInvoker\WinPE). Register it from there (probably should have copied it into C:\Windows\System32 first) using regsvr32.exe
Still not getting correct menu (this was my fault - hadn't changed a DNS pointer yet) and in poking around, found a reference to ODBC:Altiris eXpress Database. Checking my ODBC settings just in case anything was different with 6.9SP6, find out that DS installation doesn't seem to create this ODBC connection any longer. Create the ODBC SQL connection to my new SQL 2012 database (change my DNS alias), boot up my test laptop and I'm back in business!
Couple observations:
Even though I have "Disable computer rename facility" option checked, I still get prompted for the computer name during job selection.
Even though I have Flat Menu Type selected, I get a Hierarchical menu presented: folder names of tagged jobs.