NS7 Image Capture Question... With many more questions to follow.

Anyone??

Other than a lab at MF I haven't used the DS7 engine very extensively. Your licensing allows you to use DS6.9 (the 32bit version), and I would recommended at least testing that to make sure your processes work before using the DS7 Web. I hope to have a better test lab up soon, so I can give a more useful response.

The symantec support individual assigned to my company thought that the issue might be that the client was VISTA since there were some bugs with vista clients and NS7... Unfortunately I wiped the test box and installed XP sp2 and it did the exact same thing.

Since DS7 does not support PXE as a boot system, are you using a boot disk?

need more information:
I beleive you have manually kept deploy.cab on c:\sysprep folder for Windows Xp machine and the attached inf file is the same.
1. Dd your computer booted to automation environemt or the Task just failed after sysprep task got completed.
2. Can you confirm that you are using the latest version of sysprep?
3. Is your operation system installed on C drive

I've gotten a little further now..

the sysprep file I mentioned above is a file that altiris is creating.. I never had the SYSPREP.*CAB* file installed on the machine I was trying to pull the image from.

once I put sysprep.cab on the machine I get a complete image taken and uploaded, but then once the machine reboots I receive the following in NS7:

Status: Failed
Return code: -1

Start time: 6/19/2009 10:35:02 AM
End time: 6/19/2009 11:05:07 AM
Total run time: 30 min 5 sec

An unknown exception was thrown.

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at TaskServerHandler.CreateImageJobHandler.OnClientTaskComplete(TaskEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Jobs.ClientJobHandler.OnHandleEvent(Object Sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Tasks.BaseClientTaskHandler.OnHandleEvent(ITaskExecutionEngine engine, IBaseTaskExecutionInstance instance, TaskInstanceRequest request, Object sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Tasks.BaseClientTaskHandler.HandleEvent(ITaskExecutionEngine engine, IBaseTaskExecutionInstance instance, TaskInstanceRequest request, Object sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Execution.ClientTaskEngineExecutionThread.ExecuteTaskHandler()

Job Start

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_BCDEdit" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_AnswerFile" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_SysprepSettings" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_CreateImage" Completed

On the machine that I am attempting to create an image of, it reboots and I receive an error about sysprep. if I click OK, it reboots the machine and basically loops. I apologize, but I do not have the error message that the client machine gets.

As far as PXE goes.. I am familiar with it and realize it is needed for doing bare metal stuff. Right now, I am only testing NS7 as far as doing an image capture job, backup job, etc.. I assume what Altiris is doing is pushing an automation partition as when the client reboots it does absolutely go into automation and transfers an image just as it should... PXE isnt the issue here.

Some additional information and another question....

Under DS I know you have to rebuild your boot image in order to get new drivers in it... I am too new though, to know how I am supposed to get the preboot image under NS7 built with new drivers.

the symantec guy I am working with on the issue in this thread has suggested I try a different machine (after trying to capture an image of both XP and VISTA on a Dell Optiplex 755.).... So I installed XP and NIC drivers on a brand new Dell Optiplex 760 that I have, attempted to capture an image, and now when it gets to the pre boot environment it goes no further as it doesnt have a NIC driver loaded.

So how do I go about rebuilding the image with the 760 NIC drivers for the pre boot environment under NS7???

Thank  you all for your kind and helpful responses. NS7 is an ugly thing, but I'm going to need to learn it.

I've gotten the automation boot driver issue figured out.. I just had to use bootwiz to add the drivers to a new "dummy" image, and then re-pushed the agent out to the test client and everything was great.

I also have determined that I can at least use GHOST rather than RDEPLOY to create a "BACKUP DISK IMAGE" and was hopeful that the "CAPTURE DISK IMAGE" job would also work using Ghost, but it has failed with the following:

Status: Failed
Return code: -1

Start time: 6/24/2009 9:43:28 AM
End time: 6/24/2009 10:29:21 AM
Total run time: 46 min 53 sec

An unknown exception was thrown.

Show raw exception message
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at TaskServerHandler.CreateImageJobHandler.OnClientTaskComplete(TaskEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Jobs.ClientJobHandler.OnHandleEvent(Object Sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Tasks.BaseClientTaskHandler.OnHandleEvent(ITaskExecutionEngine engine, IBaseTaskExecutionInstance instance, TaskInstanceRequest request, Object sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Tasks.BaseClientTaskHandler.HandleEvent(ITaskExecutionEngine engine, IBaseTaskExecutionInstance instance, TaskInstanceRequest request, Object sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Execution.ClientTaskEngineExecutionThread.ExecuteTaskHandler()

Job Start

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_BCDEdit" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_AnswerFile" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_SysprepSettings" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_CreateImage" Completed

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_ProductionBoot"

Run "Capture Disk Image - XP_SystemConfiguration"

Stop

SystSystem.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at TaskServerHandler.CreateImageJobHandler.OnClientTaskComplete(TaskEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Jobs.ClientJobHandler.OnHandleEvent(Object Sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Tasks.BaseClientTaskHandler.OnHandleEvent(ITaskExecutionEngine engine, IBaseTaskExecutionInstance instance, TaskInstanceRequest request, Object sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Tasks.BaseClientTaskHandler.HandleEvent(ITaskExecutionEngine engine, IBaseTaskExecutionInstance instance, TaskInstanceRequest request, Object sender, BaseEvent evt) at Altiris.ClientTask.Server.Execution.ClientTaskEngineExecutionThread.ExecuteTaskHandler()