Category Archive: Deployment

After taking a Disk2VHD image of an XP SP3 machine, I noticed that I could not install the Integration Components after copying the VHD to my Hyper-V machine and running the Integration Components setup off vmguest.iso.  It would attempt to upgrade the HAL, tell me I needed to reboot to upgrade the HAL, and then reboot and get to the same place.  If I clicked “OK” again to upgrade the HAL, it would reboot – if I hit “cancel”, the installation would fail.

After some fiddling, I figured out that Disk2VHD added the /HAL=halacpi.dll string to boot.ini for the default boot option, whereas the Integration Components setup was trying to upgrade the HAL to an APIC hal (halaacpi.dll).  I changed the boot option in boot.ini to remove the /KERNEL=ntkrpuni.exe string, changed the /HAL=halacpi.dll string to /HAL=halaacpi.dll, and copied halaacpi.dll from sp3.cab on my XP SP3 media to %windir%\system32.  Once I rebooted, the IC’s installed successfully.  I then went back and removed the /HAL switch from boot.ini entirely and rebooted, and all is well.

Microsoft supports running SCCM 2007 SP2 on a 2008 R2 server, but I’m doubting whether or not running SCCM 2007 SP2 in Native mode in an environment using a 2008 R2 CA is supported (and if so, there’s an issue to be aware of).  Specifically, it seems like client certificates created with a 2008 R2 CA (following the instructions on Technet for a 2008 CA) do not work by default in SCCM 2007 when running a site in Native mode (you’ll get MP errors stating that it cannot connect via HTTP, and mpcontrol.log will contain errors that the SAN2 fields have errors).  It seems if you create your 2008 R2 CA with the default Key store provider, the client certificates just do not work.  However, if you create your 2008 R2 CA with the Microsoft Strong cryptography provider (which is the default for 2003 and 2008 CAs), magically the certs created work fine.  If you look at the contents of the certs created between a 2008 and 2008 R2 CA, they “look” identical, but something else must be happening I haven’t dug into yet.

Having a USB key that will install multiple versions of Windows is great, but what if you want to add other Windows PE images to it, above and beyond the installers?  For example, what if you wanted to add a recovery environment, like the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT), or a BartPE environment, or any other Windows PE-based environments?  Well, it’s not that hard to do, and I’ll document how to do it with the Microsoft DaRT x86 and x64 recovery ISOs that it creates in this example.

Adding the DaRT files

First, you will need to copy the files from the MS DaRT WinPE ISO image to your “Content” folder that was created when you used MDT 2010 as per my previous post.  The content folder should look something like this:

And the contents of the MS DaRT ISO image, once extracted to the hard disk, will look something like this:

Update: If you want the default VL/KMS activation keys for Windows Vista through Windows Server 2012R2, they can be found here.

To go along with my previous post on deploying Windows via MDT 2010, here is a list of the “default” keys that Windows uses when you choose not to enter a product key during setup.  These keys of course will not activate, but you can enter them into your task sequences when you are prompted for a product key to use.  This will make your setup more unattended.

Here’s the list:

Windows Vista:

• Ultimate  –  VMCB9-FDRV6-6CDQM-RV23K-RP8F7
• Business  –  4D2XH-PRBMM-8Q22B-K8BM3-MRW4W
• Home Premium  –  X9HTF-MKJQQ-XK376-TJ7T4-76PKF
• Home Basic  –  RCG7P-TX42D-HM8FM-TCFCW-3V4VD
• Starter  –  X9PYV-YBQRV-9BXWV-TQDMK-QDWK4

Windows 7:

• Ultimate  –  D4F6K-QK3RD-TMVMJ-BBMRX-3MBMV
• Professional  –  HYF8J-CVRMY-CM74G-RPHKF-PW487
• Home Premium  –  RHPQ2-RMFJH-74XYM-BH4JX-XM76F
• Home Basic  –  YGFVB-QTFXQ-3H233-PTWTJ-YRYRV
• Starter  –  7Q28W-FT9PC-CMMYT-WHMY2-89M6G