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Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

  • 1.  Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 14, 2016 08:09 AM

    Not a great title I know, but there are so many issues with GSS3.1 I don't really know where to start.

    Our need for the product is to do repeated reinstallations of a limited number of images to a number of identical computers - end up with a room or rooms full of machines with an identical build, but of course, unique machine names and SIDs. Used to do this with no trouble on GSS2.5.1.....an effortless and rapid task.

    Having finally(!) got a working install of the server and console after tripping over every single 'feature' of the new installer I got to the stage of actually managing to image a machine - hoorah.

    Next step was to delpoy this image to another machine. This is where I fnid that I have no choice but to use Sysprep. Hateful & slow and very much a retrograde step as far as I am concerned.

    So, while messing with sysprep and starting to make some inroads, I now find the the Remote Agent Installer has decided to play up. Nothing has knowingly been changed on the system other than applying the latest Windows updates this morning, but now, there is a wait of some minutes after pressing the 'ADD' button on the 'selecting clients' dialogue before control returns and I can type in a machine name. Assuming I wait long enough, I can then enter the machine name and the install does eventually work.

     

    Fair to say I truly loath this version of GSS. I wish I could stick with 2.5.1.......



  • 2.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 18, 2016 07:03 AM

    And the joy continues....if I deploy a sysprepped image, the target machines end up with the same SID as the source. Not much use. Tried a test on a different target platform in case it was some oddity of the laptops I was working with....and the deployment failed completely, leaving me with unbootable machines.

    At least I still have the old GSS 2.5.1 server running so I can restore the machines to a working state with that if I have to.

    ..and the PXE server is playing up now too - clients won't autorun the PXE option despite it being set as default. Worked on Friday, not today.

    Good grief.



  • 3.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 18, 2016 08:35 AM

    The SIDs being the same suggests that Sysprep is not working as it should, and this is part of Microsoft's deployment kit rather than Ghost. Make sure you have the right version for the operating system you are sysprepping. The SID issue is actually a non-issue - ee this article by mark Russinovitch, one of the original SysInternals crew but now headhunted by Microsoft:

    https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/markrussinovich/2009/11/03/the-machine-sid-duplication-myth-and-why-sysprep-matters/

    There is a suggestion there that Sysprep does not change the SID where applications are installed on an image - not sure if this still applies but then I can see the logic behind that due to the system security descriptors being defined.  So are you actually sysprepping a bare O/S image or one with apps in it?

    As for things working on Friday and not today - last week had Patch Tuesday in it. If your machines rebooted over the weekend, which they might have done based on the default behaviour of Win 10, then that **might** have something to do with it.

    Meanwhile, speak with your networks team - it would not surprise me if they did something and forgot to tell you....



  • 4.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 18, 2016 09:02 AM

    EdT - well, that's some really useful information....thank you. The image wasn't pristine - it has an anti-virus product installed on it so that explains why sysprep failed. A base OS install plus anti virus is about as bare an image as I want to produce, so that suggests sysprep is never going to be any use to me....but, if having a cloned SID is a non-issue as that article says, then I won't fret about it. I was seeing some weird issues with machine identities in the domain though, which was troubling and what led me to blame it on the SID.

    I did wonder about windows updates causing issues - the issue with the agent deployment tool happened last week, I think after updates...but not certain.

    Sadly, the 'networks team' would be me...although I can never rule out one of my colleagues putting something strange onto the network.

    My principle use for the tool is to rebuild classrooms of computers with one of a range of previously created images. At the moment, I don't even seem to be able to get even the simplet task to work reliably or repeatably. 

    I'm really having trouble getting my head round how this new version works though - clearly any previous knowledge and experience with 2.5 is leading me astray here as the methods I used to use just no longer apply. Another problem is that I am going to have to hand over a working system to someone who is pretty non-technical before too long. That'll be hard when I can't even get it to do the most basic tasks myself yet. The only thing keeping me going at the moment is the probably naive hope that it really can't be as bad as I think it is......can it?

     

    OK, back to the grind...more imaging tests....

     



  • 5.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 19, 2016 07:15 AM

    Is there room on your classroom machines' hard disks to have a partition with the images stored on it?  You could set up a dual boot system with WinPE and use that to restore a local image. By the way - the imagex utility included in WinPE works in much the same way as Ghost and can be scripted easily.

    Although the following article is way out of date, you may be able to tweak it to your requirement as it details the dual boot setup.

    https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/readyadventures-winpe

     



  • 6.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 19, 2016 07:50 AM

    Hi Ed,

    Firstly, thank you. I do appreciate your input here - you've already helped me a lot with the pointers on Sysprep and SID.

    I'm making some progress, in that you've helped my understanding and I've finally(!) realsied that although it may look similar and have a similar name, this is indeed a very different product to 2.5.1 so it's me that's going to have to adapt.

    Carrying local images isn't really going to work for me I don't think - the machines can get really messed up during some of the courses so I can never rely on the image being there when I need it, hence the use of GSS 2 to push out server stored images in the first place really.

    Other than what looks like a plain bug with the long delay in the Remote Agent Installer, the main issues I need to resolve one way or the other seem to boil down to two things now. Computer names and joining them to a Domain. The names problem crops up when a failed configuration job ends up giving a machine a name based on it's serial number rather than the name I first gave it. At this point, I simply don't want to have to accept using the serial number for the computer name! I want to be able to identify the machines using a simple naming system that has served us well for many years. The trigger for this naming problem seems to be trying to join a machine to the Domain where the machine account already exists - it fails with a Win32 2224 error and leaves the machine with the unhelpful name. In the case where I have pervioosly deleted the computer object in the Domain or one never existed, it's working as I'd hope, albeit with some very long periods where a 'configuring computer' step seems to do nothing for ages.

    I've changed the BIOS asset tags of the machines in question but the Console insists on using the serial number, not the 'asset tag'. I'd be happy if I could persuade it to use the tag as it's a simple task to edit this entry in the BIOS and somethign I do routinely anyway.

    I long for the old days where once you registered a machine with the console, it built a database entry keyed to MAC address and that was that.

    I have a call in for this and hopefully with that, and the help here I'll figure this out and get it working the way I need it to....bascially, the way 2.5.1 does.

    I may have to come to terms with doing things very differently in the end....but until that's proven beyond doubt, I really don't see why I should have to change the entire workflow due to a version change.

     

    Cheers



  • 7.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 19, 2016 11:22 AM

    Don't know if this fits in with your configuration setup, but you can use WMI to pull out the asset tag of the machine (usually), as I used this very method of naming machines back in the XP days using Window's regular build process. Lot easier than messing with databases as the asset tag can't go anywhere or get corrupted by the normal 'luser' ( a la Dilbert).



  • 8.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 20, 2016 05:55 AM

    I've set the BIOS asset tag to the name I want the console to stick to....but the damn things seems to insist on using the serial number. I could just admit defeat and use those, but they are far from easy things to work with.

    I'm currently looking at getting hold of the HP tool for tattooing the BIOS and see if that will let me set the serial number to the ID I want to use. At least that way it might work....  Sadly, the freely available 'biosconfigutility' won't do it - reports 'access denied' when I try it.

    After much messing, I now have a few machines deployed from an image. They have the names I want them to have. It wasn't straightforward though and involved some manual resetting of names on the machines themselves - still getting the problem where the config job fails if the computer account is present in the Domain which then seems to reliably screw up the computer name, still getting some very long delays during some configuration steps. As an example, just renamed a machine and took it out of the Domain and into a workgroup using a simple 'Modify Configuration' task that has %NAME% as computer name and a WORKGROUP sepcified. Took 35 minutes and 49 seconds starting with a switched on & logged in client that the console was showing as 'connected' - that CAN'T be right, surely. The old GSS 2.5.1 would have done that in moments. I'm slightly suspicious of my Domain here though. I recently built a new 2012R2 PDC but there is still an old 2003 BDC running. I'm waiting for new hardware to build another 2012 box so I can retire the old 2003 one. Tempted to just down that box and run some more tests just in case. Looking at the netsetup.log on various clients I've been testing with GSS and I'm not seeing anything I recognise as problematic, but I'm no kind of expert. I'm struggling with the idea that if I manually join a computer to the domain, it works just fine thank you and takes moments but the console is completely incapable of doing that step. I am using domain admin as the service account to join/remove machines, FQDN used when specifying it.

    So far, I just feel like I am simply 'doing it wrong'. Just can't figure out how I should be doing it. Dummies Guide to GSS3.1 anyone?? I sure feel like a dummy at the moment.

    A specific question if I may - the Console, 'Options/Global Options/Synchronize display names with computer names' tick box....what exactly does that do? How does it decide which is 'right', computer itself or record in the console?  I have been working with it set after a call last week with support, but I'm not convinced it should be set.

     

    ...thank you for your patience!

     



  • 9.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 20, 2016 10:49 AM

    Well, by way of an update....

    Tried downing the possibly suspect BDC - no change in anything. I was clutching at straws....

    For the crack, just got another new machine, base Win7 install, named and joined to domain manually - all good. Push the Agent, OK (apart from the 4 1/2 minute pause). Push the Automation Folder - fine. Machine appears in console with the name I gave it. I also did a 'Get Inventory' on it as well. Try to deploy an image and configure target with correct name and domain membership. Target boots to deployment, image pushed to target, fine. 'Configuring Computer' task then takes 18 minutes to do nothing - it fails with 'The specified computer account cannot be found' and as you'd expect, leaves the target with the identity of the machine the image was taken from. Manually renamed and rejoined the machine, all network resources are avaialbe to it, but the console will now not see the machine - insists it is offline.

    What am I doing wrong here? I seem to be going backwards.



  • 10.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 21, 2016 04:14 AM

    If you are not using Sysprep, this might be a manifestation of the workstation password expiry issue on any ghosted images that are older than 7 days. This is something I first ran into back in the NT4 days when reimaging machines from a locally stored ghost image - every Monday the machine account would need to be deleted on the server and the machine rejoined to the domain. Basically, the machine account has a password that is automatically changed every 7 days, so when you restore an image older than that, it has the old password and cannot join. The fix requires a simple registry hack - just run regedit and change the DWORD value of:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Netlogon\Parameters\DisablePasswordChange    from 0 to 1

    On a more general note, and given the problems you have experienced, would it be worth purchasing a support agreement so that you can get help on tap from Symantec Support, as it remains quite a complex product that requires a good depth of knowledge of how Microsoft deployment works as ultimately that is what is being used. You also need to be sure of your environment, and things like having your switches enabled for IGMP protocols is one of them - at least if you want multicasting to work.  There is a huge amount of information embedded in Connect threads from the past so it's also worth searching on issues when you run into problems.

    Finally, what NIC chipset do you have in your machines?  There are some chipsets for which WinPE drivers were unreliable in the past, and although I see a lot less of these issues nowadays, new chipsets are emerging all the time so it is another area where you need to take extra care.  For the record, which version of WinPE are you working with?  WinPE4 uses Win 8.1 drivers and WinPE5 uses Win 10 drivers.  There is also a question about whether the firewall on your WinPE boot environment is enabled or not. I can't recall the exact command to turn it off, but I know it can be found by searching this forum.

     



  • 11.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 21, 2016 11:34 AM

    Hi Ed,

    I have been using Sysprep, although never did in the past with 2.5.1 and never had any issues with machine accounts expiring.

    Already on support - I have an ongoing call in at the moment. Based on todays remote session, I'm doing nothing wrong - the problems are a mystery to the support chap as well at this point. I was honestly hoping that at some point during the remote sessions today the support analyst was going to spot what stupid thing I had been doing wrong but it wasn't to be.

    The last test we did was to try and get the console to take a machine out of the domain and put it into a workgroup - failed.

    More knowledge would indeed be grand - I've never used Sysprep before and know next to nothing about it. That said, the tasks I am attempting should 'just work'. My old 2.5.1 server & console are still working fine...if this goes on much longer, I might just give up on 3.1, write off the expense to experience. I use multicast here all the time and am happy the network is OK across the site. Configuring the switches for IGMP was one of the first thigns we did way back when we first got into multicastnig with the old system and always part of the routine when installing a new switch.

    PXE & WinPE are working OK I think - I just wasn't understanding the workflow properly. I'm using V10 of the ADK. NIC's tried so far are Realtek PCIe GBE in the HP450 laptops and Intel 82567LM-3 in the odler HP6000SFF boxes I have also been trying out.

    WinPE firewall is off - I've spotted that config line running past while watching clients.

    On the topic of firewalls, I turned off the server firewall on day 1!! Until I can get it all working it'll stay off, then I can fret about what holes it needs drilling in it afterwards. Also been working with the client firewalls off as well...just in case.

    I've uploaded logs from todays efforts so they can be examined. Hopefully something will come to light soon as I'm running out of time here. I don't want to go back to 2.5.1 but I might be forced to if this doesn't get resolved.

    I'll keep searching - I do find answers in the archives, I fell over the 'spaces in image names' issue the other day. Again, not somethng that ever bothered GSS 2.5.1 but easily fixed.

    Again, thank you for your thoughts and input, I really do appreciate it - I'm hoping for a Eureka moment to come from one place or the other!

    I will of course update this thread as and when things happen.

    Cheers



  • 12.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 21, 2016 03:19 PM

    So what is the issue you've got open with the support team?  I'm just curious if I can help or not.



  • 13.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 22, 2016 04:29 AM

    Morning CBoy65,

     

    Against protocol, I kind of raised a few on the same call, but information from EdT has cleared a couple of those - mostly me misunderstanding a couple of key points so they have been dropped now. First was the SID - I mistakenly thought that the SID had to be changed once a machie was cloned, turns out this isn't true. Secondly I misunderstood how the WinPE image worked under the enw system, so thought it wasn't working properly. I now know I was mistaken and that it is working as it should.

    Two issues reamin.

    There was the problem with the Remote Agent Installer first off - it runs OK, but when you reach the stage 'Selecting Clients' and click the ADD button, it stops responding. Initially I thought it just bombed, but if patient, it will come back after 4 minutes 32 seconds, offer the machine selection dialogue as it shold and from there, all is good. I'm convinced that the very first time I did this task on this setup, it didn't do that, but all recent uses of the tool have behaved this way. This issue was noted and passed on as I understand I'm not alone in reporting it. This isn't a deal breaker, just a bit tedious as of course I can install the agent from the client side as well. Suspicion is a Windows update may have triggered this one as we had update day part way through this process.

    The key issue I have that is with support at present is that the console doesn't seem able to manage clients properly when manipulating their names and/or domain/workgroup membership. At the moment, the best I am able to do is to deploy an image prepared on a different machine (but the same paltform) to a target, then manually change the targets machine name and join it to the domain (should I need to do that).

    From the start, configuration jobs have taken an inordinate amount of time which lokos very much like timeouts taking place, followed by a task failure.

    The error reports will say that a machine account doesn't exists when it does, or alternatively that it can't do the task because the machine account already exists.....Joseph yesterday checked all I had done, and concluded I had done nothing wrong.

    To save you trawling through the entire thing - my principle use for Ghost is to deploy an image created on one machine to a number of identical machines, end up with those target machines having their originally allocated names that they had when I first 'introduce them' to the console (not that of the machine used to generate the image) and be a member of a domain or workgroup, depending on the intended use of that particular group of machines at a given time. This is a task that we do frequently, as we set up classrooms for a range of different courses. This is a task that GSS 2.5.1 has been doing perfectly well for us for years...and still does at the moment as I am forced to keep using it to get the job done while I struggle with GSS 3.1 Will also use it to create some individual backups but I don't anticipate too much grief with that.

     

    If/when I can get to the stage of routinely doing what I need to do, then I can worry about some of the more subtle things like flow control.

    Please do ask if you want more detail on anything or any tests doing.

    Thanks folks :)



  • 14.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 22, 2016 04:30 AM

    Now might be a good time to go through a general network diagnostic to make sure that services such as WINS and DNS are working correctly - a bit of housekeeping is never a bad idea and it never fails to surprise me what obscure little network issues can bring things to a screeching halt.  It's also worth checking that the service account you are using actually has the necessary permissions and privileges to join a machine to the domain. This is not really my field of expertise but I've seen mention of these sorts of issues in the past.  Also - are the necessary ports open ?

    At least you have a call open so the real experts may be able to track down the issue at some point!



  • 15.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 22, 2016 07:45 AM

    Mmm, maybe interesting...  Decided to rip it up and start again with the clients this morning. Uninstalled the suotmation folder & client from an HP6000SFF box. Got it up to date with Windows updates, on the domani, correctly named. Pushed the Agent (an obervation on this later), pushed the automation folder - all good. Ran a taks to create a sysprepped image. All good, took just under 28 minutes start to finish, 23 of those was pulling the image itself. Not too bad for a 30G or so image size. After the task completed, PC rebooted, did the Windows Setup routine as one would expect and hope then ended up as it had started. All good.

    Repeated the exercise on one of the laptops. Update windows OK but during all the ups & downs, didn;t once see the client as active in the console. Manually uninstalled the Agent. Re-installed the agent but have noticed that there is no Symantec Dagent Service icon in the systray. It shows as present in task manager, and I can manually run the DAgent config tool OK and all looks as it should....but this client still won't show itself in the console. I tried deleting it hoping it would re-appear after I rebooted the client - nothing so far. Has to be signifcant. I'll update the call I have in with this as well, just in case it helps.

     

    Re the Remote Agent Installer - up until just now, I have just been typing in the machne name once the Browse dialgoue finally showed up. Today, I tried to actually browse...and it bombed - eventually popped up up a warning saying 'no network'. Again, might be a clue there for the tech guys so I'll pass that one along as well.

     

    At present, I am trying to push the successfully created sysprepped image of the HP6000SFF to a couple of identical machines to see what I end up with.....OK, that worked as I'd expect. Machines built, correctly named and in a workgroup. Final test....join the domain....and that has just worked perfectly in a very timely manner.

     

    Until I can get the laptop to show it's face in the console, not much more I can do with that one. May or may not be 'interesting' that these HP450 G3 laptops displayed the problem with the BCD not parsing [BOOT] properly so needed the fix applying.

     

    ...it's just reappeared, but as a greyed out inactive device even though it is most definitely on and connected to the network and can ping and be pinged by the console, by name or number.

     

    ...and the laptop has just appeared in the console as active and logged on. Took probably 30 minutes or so?

     

    Starting to look like it might be specific to the HP450G3 laptops, and the problems I had when briefly messing with the HP6000SFF boxes were down to a 'feature' that the support guy noted for me - don't select the 'Automatically perform configuration task after completing the imaging task' option, just put a config task in the list after the image task.

    Hey ho...might be getting somewhere here.....



  • 16.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 22, 2016 09:10 AM

    Something to try on the laptops - go into the bios and turn off the WiFi adapter (or from the keyboard if that option is supported). It would not surprise me in the slightest if the WiFi adapter comes online before the machine is joined to the domain and messes things up. A few years back, I did a big update on an XP build process that supported 20+ models of desktop and laptop, and the laptops' WiFi adapter software did not get installed until after the machine was joined to the domain..  Just a thought - but having two network adapters in a machine running Ghost has never lead to a reliable outcome in my limited experience.



  • 17.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 22, 2016 10:37 AM

    ....funny you should mention the WiFi. I had deployed a small classroom with 10 of these when we first got them a few weeks back. I used GSS 2.5.1 to put a base build on them - all good, although the actual data transfer rate was shocking - around 100MB/m, I'd expect more like 1000MB/m. I put that down to using 32 bit drivers in the old WinPE2.

    But, to the point, the specific need for that classroom was to NOT have network access, so I turned off the WiFi in the BIOS...and the machines wouldn't boot Windows, only safe mode. I only got Win10 install media with them, so can't even do a fresh Win7 build with the WiFi disabled from the start....but it just struck to me I may be able to push a sysprepped image at one......I'll give that a go assuming the sysprepped image create task works OK. So far so good - it's running at just over 1000MB/min

     

    I've alredy tried switching off the WiFi with the keyboard button but that doesn't seem to have changed the way the machine communicates with the console. Also disabled the BT in the BIOS as we don't need it so one less thing to bother with.



  • 18.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 28, 2016 06:26 AM

    Well, it looks very much as if it is just the 450G3 laptops (so far). That sysprepped image task failed, in that it didn't run sysprep before taking the image. 

    Today, I've been trying again and it's just gone squirrely again. The 'new' laptop is now extremely reluctant ot appear as active in the console and is effectively ignoring anything except a WOL.

    I tried again, and it just lost contact at the 'rebooting to production environment' stage, although it had executed sysprep partially as when I manually rebooted, it had to reinstall all the drivers again. It was still in the domain though. Weird.

    The tests I did the the 6000SFF boxes were all good. Create image, deploy image, leave/join domain.

    I think I'll try some other laptops we have and see how that turns out.  



  • 19.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 28, 2016 09:25 AM

    Sounds like a plan.

    Have you checked whether HP have any bios updates for your systems?  Also, if these machines support UEFI bioses, have you tried with the UEFI feature turned off?



  • 20.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 28, 2016 11:48 AM

    Hi EdT,

    Not done a BIOS update yet but it was on the list of things to try. I've been distracted with testing other platforms....which so far work just fine.

    The HP450G3 machines really don't seem to like the agent. Support asked me to install MP1 which I did yesterday, then rebuild the WinPE packages, clear down then re-install agent and automation on a machine and try again. Once again, as soon as the agent & automation folder goes onto a 450, it gets pissy and won't appear as active in the console. Console can ping and browse to the client, client can ping and broswe to the console host server.

    Just doing a test on a somewhat older HP6570b at the moment, so far, so good. Agent & automation went on fine, console repsonsive the machine state, machine responsive to console. Imaged & configured fine, just doing a deploy to another example of the same type - so far so good....

     

    ...back to the 450G3, yes, they do support UEFI, looks like it's off anyway?

     

    I'll check the BIOS now....the 6570 is just finishing off - perfect. Start to finish, 32G image, took 25 minutes. Happy with that.

     

     

    ...ETA, updated the BIOS, no change at all.



  • 21.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 29, 2016 08:07 AM

    Maybe you should now raise a call with HP ?

    If UEFI is turned off on these HPs, is it worth trying again with it turned on?  Also, do you know what chipset HP are using?  Is it Sandlake that won't run Windows 7 ?



  • 22.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Apr 29, 2016 09:50 AM

    I am starting to think the issue is with the laptop network and not Ghost...kind of. I say 'kind of' because other than being a bit slow due to 32 bit drivers, they work perfectly when under the control of the old GSS 2.5.1 system. Same build other than the persence of the Agent on the GSS3.1 setup and the Symantec install on the GSS2.5.1 setup. Basically, I took identical machines, basic build as-supplied but minus some of the bloatware, then on one I installed the Symatec/GSS2.5.1 client, on another I installed the Agent/automation partition for the GSS3.1 environment. 

    Last effort at a test, I pushed an image to three machines, the console claims it all worked, including adding the machines to a domain and applying their 'proper' name. Image pushed OK but none of the config tasks appeared to do anything to the laptops, although the console claimed they had completed successfuly, they hadn't, all three machines were complete clones and nothing more appeared to be happening.. Very oddly though...I just came back after lunchbreak to find they had completed.......huh?

    Chipset...no idea TBH. They came with Win7 on them and seem to function well enough as long as I don't let DAgent anywhere near them.

    I will try one with Win10 on it.



  • 23.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted May 04, 2016 10:16 AM

    Mmm. Curious. Did that task again. Console reckoned it had finished 25 minutes after starting. Clients don't agree....one hour later, they just re-booted again but still have the wrong names at the moment. They show offline in the console.

     

    Also spotted another oddity. On one of the machines that has received a lot of messing with, I spotted it wasn't getting a DHCP IP address. Eventually tracked it down to the DHCP client service being disabled. Re enabled it and instant IP time. I KNOW I didn't do that so can only assume it was the Agent. All the config jobs specify DHCP for IP - I was careful about that.

    I've seen others of these machines struggle to get an IP address after a task has run so suspect it isn't a one-off.



  • 24.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted May 10, 2016 05:33 AM

    For anyone sticking with this epic....a roundup.

    Every machine type I have tried other than the HP450G3 laptops work as I'd expect and like them to. I can't say I like the new system over the old one, but I doubt that will ever change and no doubt reflects the fact I migrated from GSS2.5.1 and not Altiris. There are some features that are quite good, but I'd trade them all for the simple functionality of the old GSS. I do also get that part of my dislike of this new version stems from us having a small setup here where the benefits of the Altiris core are of little value.

    The HP450G3 machines do actually work, but there is an as yet unexplained 'wait period' of around an hour before a configuration task will actually complete AFTER the console says it has. These machines are also very 'unresponsive' as far as them appearing in the console is concerned. I attribute all these issues to a comms problem between agent and console as clearly the agent is unhappy to be living on these machines for whatever reason. It looks as if the agent is messing up the IP configuration of the clients somehow??  I keep finding that these machines have their DHCP service disabled after they have been 'manipulated' by the console. That certainly can't help things!

    The Remote Agent Installer pauses/hangs for 4 1/2 minutes each time I press the ADD button to add a client. If I try and use the BROWS option, it just crashes. Manually adding the agent to the clients is much quicker than this irritating delay. I'm hoping that one gets sorted at some future MP release but it's not the end of the world.

    Currently waiting for a solution to the HP450G3 issue. Full logs have been provided so I guess I now need to be patient.

     



  • 25.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Jun 08, 2016 11:58 AM

    To keep this alive in the vain hope someone else is suffering something similar....

    I've been jumping hoops for Support at depressingly regular intervals, producing logs and generally wasting days of my time to no useful end.

    Yesterdays test, I took a machine that I restored to nearly-new using GSS2.5.1 (which still works just fine thank you....), tried to take a 'backup' image then re-deploy that to the same machine. After installing the agent and automation partition (and fixing the busted BCD), the machine was fine, responsive to commands from the console and appeared active in the console promptly after re-boots (about 10 seconds after the launch tune sounds). I did a 'remove from domain and create image' task......and that was it. From that point forward, there is now an 18 minute delay after every reboot before the machine will appear active in the console. I didn't even get to deploying the image - just took one.

    I also tried the same trick using a brand new out of the box machine (my last one as it happens). I just completed the first install routine, gave it a name, joined the domain, installed the agent and automation partition (and yes, fixed the broken BCD). Took an image....seemed OK until I tried to redeploy it...Ghost crapped out suggesting I try again using the -NTEXACT switch, but of course by now, the machine is broken......

    So, tried to PXE boot to deploy a kind-of-working image to it, only to find that these machines don't work on the PXE boot - starts up OK then hangs for a while with a blank light blue screen then reboots. Other hardware I have works perfectly fine with the PXE config I have, and these HP450G3 machines also work with my old 3COM/GSS2.5.1 PXE setup. I am so glad I kept that system going.......at least I have a way back when GSS3.1 screws up my platforms.

    Still messing with my head is the fact that GSS3.1 works just fine with my other platforms, and based on some initial tests, even seems to work MOSTLY OK with Win10 on the HP450G3. There are some issues but at the moment, I'm concentrating my effots on getting this going properly with Win7.

     

    Starting to lose patience now......



  • 26.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Jul 05, 2016 04:32 AM

    Still struggling along with this....and as time passes, things just get more and more strange. I'm at the stage now where I really don't have clue one as to what is going on.

    This all centres around the HP450G3 machines. Since I first started with them, nothing about the machines has changed. When they first arrived, I upgraded the RAM to 8GB and BIOS to what was then the latest version, 1.10. During testing I have reverted to the OEM 4G just in case but that made no difference. Last week I upgraded one machine I am testing with to V1.11 BIOS that just came out - no change.

    Images I took from these machines using the old GSS2.5.1 system that used to work fine, and that I was able to deploy to the HP450G3 machines using GSS2.5.1 no longer work. I really do not understand this at all - what has happened to a previouslyworking setup?? How can a failed image deploy from one system, stop the other system working when I use whole-disk imaging? No doubt a cryptic switch for Ghost will solve this...anyone??

    Images I took using GSS3.1 will no longer deploy. Or rather, they do, but once the task is complete (assuming it does complete and doesn't fail at the last stage leaving the agent complaining it can't connect) then leaves the machine in a non-working state, asking me to install an OS. Two weeks ago I took a Win7 image and deployed it to 10 laptops in a classroom. Yesterday I tried to deploy that exact same image to an identical machine - fail. Leaves it saying no OS. 

    Recently, I created a base Win7 image and deployed this to 10 identical HP450G3 machines. As these machines are for off-site use, I also created a USB bootable backup using Ghost. This worked perfectly to copy then restore any given machine. I tested it. Last minute, I had to change to Win10, so I deploy a Win10 image, all good, update the backups on the USB sticks and as a final test, try a restore...fail. I was missing the -NTIL and -NTIC switches so re-did the batch files on the USB stick and now have what appears to be a reliable way back to a working Win10 machine, which is something at least.

     

    If all the grief is due to these being UEFI BIOS/GPT disk machines, then why did it once work but not now? I have ALWAYS used whole disk imaging, never partition imaging.

     

    I even started to suspect the SSD so removed one and replaced it with some spinning rust - no change (thankfully)

     

    I confess, I've been doing so much testing, messing and hoop-lumping for support I have lost track - did GHOST64.EXE change with the MP2 update?? Is that why images I made before using 3.1.1 and 3.1.1 MP1 no longer work??? And why on earth has my old GSS2.5.1 system stopped working on these machines????

     

    As it stands now, I am in a serous hole as the images I thought were good are no longer usable. I can recover Win10 now as thankfully the machines came with Win10 recovery media. They did not come with Win7 media though, and I NEED Win7 for some of the builds.

     

    ...did I say, I HATE this version of the product. Just when I think I'm getting to a stable and workable setup, it changes and nothing works again.

     

    I realsie this is just one big rant but if anyone out there has had any similar issues or has any ideas, I'd be really grateful to hear them. As it stands, I am looking at having to recreate all my machine images again, and with Win7, that could prove a problem....

     

    AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!

     



  • 27.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Jul 05, 2016 01:59 PM

    I can appreciate your frustration, but can really only suggest a strategy that I would adopt where there are too many variable for simple diagnosis.  You mentioned that you had had some success with a USB stick solution. This does not involve any network transports so would suggest that your test environment is having problems with networking at some level - whether it be drivers or infrastructure.  Equally, to create a WinPE environment these days, you have to download the Microsoft ADK as they don't allow OEMs to bundle it anymore. There is consequently a whole WinPE environment that you can "play" with and use to create your own bootable media to use with the Ghost executables. 

    Do your testing on VMs initially - again cuts down on the variables and is easy and quick to restore to a previous working snapshot when things go wrong.



  • 28.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Jul 06, 2016 06:42 AM

    I used Bootwiz to create a standalone USB, added Ghost64 and a couple of batch files to do very basic clone/restore jobs and they work. They did work using just the NTEXACT switch on Win7 but not with Win10, needed the NTIC and NTIL for that to work. The NTEXACT seems to no longer work for Win7 though..so at present, I have NO working method to image & restore a Win7 machine and that simply can't be right can it.

    Only thing I can think is that for some reason, the UEFI system partiton isn't getting put back on properly?? I've found a few historic references to these issues but they go back a long way. Can it be that ghost64 V12 doesn't actually work properly with UEFI hardware?

    I'm on the verge of giving up on this product entirely and trying something else to be honest. I only have just over 2 months before I leave this job and I have a lot of other stuff to get sorted before I go - I've already wasted far too much time on this POS and the support so far is no support at all, just an endless list of hoops to jump to delay anyone actually doing anything about it. I have a great deal of sympathy for the first line guy - he's doing his best but there comes a time when he needs some support as well.



  • 29.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Jul 06, 2016 07:48 AM

    I use Paragon Partition Manager myself. Just works and is cheap.



  • 30.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Jul 28, 2016 06:18 AM

    Time for an update on this. Mostly in the vain hope it might possibly benefit someone else one day!

     

    Quick recap of the initial issues.

    Agent deploy tool hangs for 4 minutes at each click of a button: 

    Still the same, I just don't bother using it. Install Agent from the client end.

     

    HP450G3 machines on Win7 Pro x64 SP1 take 17 minutes to show as active in the console after client reboots:

    Again, no answer as such, in the end, I managed to recover a very early image I took using our old GSS2.5.1 then using that, make a set of product recovery discs, built a machine from there and what do you know - no delays. I spent a good while checking driver versions and making sure they matched but no luck. Concluded there must have been some chunk of HP installed bloatware left lurking that I couldn't find that was causing the trouble. Gave up on the as-supplied WIn7 build and am now progressing with the new recovery-disc based build.

    Even this is a bit weird....having got a build fully updated I figured it was a good point to declare that the 'base build'. Bear in mind I had already created an image from the freshly recovered machine and deployed that back & forth a bit to othe machines just for a sanity check. Tried to create a new image, only to find the machine won't boot to automation, throwing an error in Boot Manager....but not the usual 0xC0000001 'A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed', this one was a 0xC0000003 'an unexpected error occurred'. Messed with that for a bit then to my great surprise, found that PXE now works.....  My suspicion here is BIOS version as at the moment, I have one on V1.12 and the rest on V1.11. It's the V1.12 that will now refuse to run the locally stored AE but WILL now run the PXE delivered version of the exact same environment.

     

    Trying to deploy this image back to the machine that I originally recovered, and used to generate the 'core' Win7 image and it tells me the disc is too small and try using -FIS (which didn't work).  WTF???

     

    PXE delivered WinPE to an HP450G3 just results in a bright blue, blank screen, then eventually a reboot:

    Curiously, as mentioned above, V1.12 BIOS seems to have cured this....but broken the ability to run the AE from the locally stored version. On balance, I think I will opt for the earlier BIOS as the new one seems to be giving me other isseus as well.

     

    Finally, the period where I was unable to deploy images that previosuly worked.....well, still not clear on what happened or why, but after rebuilding the machine using the recovery DVD, it now works again, I can again deploy images the originally worked, then failed.

     

    I feel like John Snow...I know nothing. Well, not entirely true, I do know that I only have to tolerate this 'product' for another 2 months and then I am out of here. I so wanted to leave a reliable, stable, working solution for my soon to be former colleagues but this 'product' clearly isn't that. It would be easy to blame the HP450G3 machines. After all, our other plaftorms work fine, BUT, this is a modern platform and GSS3.1 is allegedly an up to date product so what's the damn problem.

     

    OK, rant over, best advice I can give, avoid HP450G3 machines Win7 and GSS3.1 in combination.

     

     



  • 31.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Aug 01, 2016 04:51 AM

    >Trying to deploy this image back to the machine that I originally recovered, and used to generate the 'core' Win7 image and it tells me the disc is too small and try using -FIS (which didn't work).  WTF???

    Is there any chance that you might be trying to deploy the image to the first partition on the hard disk?  This is normally hidden as it is around 100Mb in size and holds a few boot files that are needed to get Windows up and running. If you try to image to the 100Mb partition, then of course it will report the partition as too small !!



  • 32.  RE: Remote Agent Installer hangs - plus generally losing the will to live!

    Posted Aug 02, 2016 11:42 AM

    Hi EdT,

    It was a disk to disk image, not partition, as are all my tasks as it happens. Actual data was about 30G of a 120G SSD so plenty of space.

    After much messing, it looks as if 'somethnig went wrong' at some point in the process of getting that build to the state I wanted it, which prompted the Boot Manager problem as well as the undeployable image problem. Interestingly, I was asked to try deploying the image to a machine but with an HDD rather than SSD in it. I tried it, and it worked (as in, it deployed) but the resulting machine still had the Boot Manager problem when trying to launch the automation environment.

    I started from scratch yet again, then did a painstaking process of 'step, image, test deploy, step'....until I got to the same place I had been before where it all went wrong again...only this time, it worked fine.

    I also seem to have found the cure for the PXE boot to blank light blue screen problem along the way as well - V1.12 of the BIOS seems to have solved that one, although given all that has gone before, I am now testing to make sure I can both image from, and deploy to, a machine with this version of BIOS.

     

    So, until something else jumps up and bites me, I actually seem to have reached a stable state. There, that was no bother, only took 4 months.....