Ghost Solution Suite

 I need to create a list of machines on my network that don't have Microsoft office Enterprise 2007 installed. I have no problem running the appropriate report (create a filter that shows machines that don't match the condition of InstalledProduct.Name = Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007). The problem is that the report is returning machines that are disconnected even if their collected data says that they have Office 07 installed. I need to find a way around this. 

Is there a way I can add a parameter to the report that says whether or not the machine is connected? If I can do that, then all I need is a little Excel magic to fix the problem.

Anyone have a better solution?

The query processor for WMI reports and views definitely not consider the connected state of a machine in whether it is included or excluded in a result, and it isn't possible to ask for that as a predicate in the query system ether - it simply doesn't look at anything except the actual collected data. So, the underlying reason why  your report is returning machines you wish to be excluded ought to lie somewhere in the collected data.

I'm willing to take a look at this for you, but since it's hard to diagnose query problems in the abstract the way to do this would be for us to get an archive of your console database which exhibits this problem, using the database backup script, which is included in GSS as C:\Program Files\Symantec\Ghost\scripts\backupdb.wsf or from the archives at http://code.google.com/p/gss-scripts/

If you can use that to create backup cabinet, get in touch with me via e-mail at the e-mail address in my Connect profile (not via Connect personal messages) and I can arrange an upload facility for you to securely upload it. That way I can load your data into a console installation here and that what we can run the exact same query against the same collected data to determine the exact details of why the query returns the rows it does.

 By the way, just a general tip about negative queries (Filters that return machines who do not match the condition): since machines with no inventory collected yet won't match most conditions, negating a simple query like (Installed Product.Name CONTAINS " Microsoft Office") will return both machines which don't have office *and* machines for which no inventory has been collected yet - for them the positive condition won't match and when you complement the entire filter they get dragged in as well.

If you don't want this to happen, the easiest way to filter out machines for which no inventory is collected is to include them by writing a condition which will always be true if inventory was collected, complementing it (so that you get the machines with no inventory), and ORing that set of machines into the main query.

The "WMI Setting" data is a handy example of something where one row will generally always exist, so that  (WMI Setting.BuildVersion IS NOT NULL) will match any machine with inventory collected. To negate that, and then include that set of machines with the main query, use the "OR NOT" conjunction, so for example a negative (non-matching) filter based on something like
  (Installed Product.Name CONTAINS "Microsoft Office" OR NOT
   WMI Setting.BuildVersion IS NOT NULL)
should return the set of machines that do not have any version of Office, but leave out machines which don't have inventory collected yet.