How would you handle this scenario considering how Configuration manager behaves?.
clive, I am guessing that these computer being reloaded are in a collection that have an OS advertised to it, if that is the case then there is 1 thing to check. Make sure that the advertisement is advertised to PXE. In the properties of the task sequence on the general tab make sure that "Make this task sequence available to bot media and PXE". If that is done and the device is "known" and in the collection this advertisement is advertised to you could generally just F12 (or the equivalent) to restart like you would bare metal. Now you may also need to "Clear last PXE Advertisement" in SCCM too. That is just searching for the PC, in any collection it is in, and right clicking it and the "Clear last PXE Advertisement". Keep in mind sometimes SCCM can be slow and doesnt pick up changes instantly when you do this so you may need to give SCCM some time to catch up. The other option, if your have Unknown Computer Support enabled is to delete the system from SCCM and make SCCM treat it as an unknown system. This would choose the advertisements that are advertised to the Unknown Computers collection. Keep in mind doing this does cause the system to loose all of its collection memberships so this could potentially be more trouble then it is worth depending how you deploy software after the OS is applied and in use. This also could cause an issue when trying to network boot again because SCCM doesnt always instantly notice that the machine has not been removed and in the smspxe.log will still see the device as known. Hope this helps.
July 2nd, 2012 3:00pm

clive, I am guessing that these computer being reloaded are in a collection that have an OS advertised to it, if that is the case then there is 1 thing to check. Make sure that the advertisement is advertised to PXE. In the properties of the task sequence on the general tab make sure that "Make this task sequence available to bot media and PXE". If that is done and the device is "known" and in the collection this advertisement is advertised to you could generally just F12 (or the equivalent) to restart like you would bare metal. Now you may also need to "Clear last PXE Advertisement" in SCCM too. That is just searching for the PC, in any collection it is in, and right clicking it and the "Clear last PXE Advertisement". Keep in mind sometimes SCCM can be slow and doesnt pick up changes instantly when you do this so you may need to give SCCM some time to catch up. The other option, if your have Unknown Computer Support enabled is to delete the system from SCCM and make SCCM treat it as an unknown system. This would choose the advertisements that are advertised to the Unknown Computers collection. Keep in mind doing this does cause the system to loose all of its collection memberships so this could potentially be more trouble then it is worth depending how you deploy software after the OS is applied and in use. This also could cause an issue when trying to network boot again because SCCM doesnt always instantly notice that the machine has not been removed and in the smspxe.log will still see the device as known. Hope this helps.
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July 14th, 2012 1:46pm

Hi We have embarked on the long hard migration road from Symantec Ghost to SCCM. Everyone in this forum has been invaluable to me sharing their knowledge and best practices. We are running sccm 2007 R3. Here's the scenario that I would like to water down for our techs. For example a lab of 35 pc's has to be re-imaged due to the software addition a teacher has requested is just to large to push down using a task sequence via a package, it is just easier to make a new image and re-image the lab. If for example 5 out of those 35 pc's crash during the re-imaging due to lose of network connectivity, what would be the easier way to re-image them since they no longer have an OS on them?. For all intensive purposes are those machines now considered bare metal? Could I not just PXE boot them and re-advertise the task to unknown computers? How would you handle this scenario?, I am looking for the easiest way to handle such a problem.
July 14th, 2012 5:57pm

you can have multiple deployment collections (deploy windows 7, deploy windows xp) and so on, which all have OS's targetted to them (a task sequence advertised to that collection), in addition, you can advertise multiple task sequences to the Unknown Computers collection. Your issue may be that the computer is no longer unknown (as it's now known) and therefore will be in one or more collections, but maybe not the collection that has a task sequence advertised to it, or... it may have run the task sequence and will not run it again. You could * advertise mutiple task sequences to your DEPLOY OS collections * advertise multiple task sequences to your Unknown Computers collection if a computer fails to image during the first option, reboot, if it won't 'see' any advertisement then you'll need to add it to another Deploy OS collection or delete it's record so that it now becomes unknown you can automate some of these actions using web services from Maik Koster, hope that helps cheers niall Step by Step ConfigMgr 2007 Guides | Step by Step ConfigMgr 2012 Guides | I'm on Twitter > ncbrady
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July 14th, 2012 6:34pm

So If I understand what your saying correctly. If I am imaging a lab of 35 PC'S and 5 of them fail for whatever reason. I should create a new collection called let's say "failed" add the 5 failed pc's to the failed collection and re-advertise the TS to that collection. Since there would be no OS on these 5 failed pc's anymore, they are considered bare metal and I would have to pxe boot them in order for the advertisement to kick off?, Did I understand you correctly?
July 14th, 2012 6:48pm

You should not need to re-advertise if it crashes during the OS phase, the system even if it's not operable is still active and in the collection. I would however supply USB or CD boot media for the techs because PXE can fail to boot on occassions and easier for them to use an alternative method than clearing PXE on the system. When the machine is booted up agian, it should start imaging the task sequence.
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July 14th, 2012 6:49pm

You mean if it crashed mid OS phase, for whatever reason if I reboot the computer, it should boot back into Winpe and kick of the same advertisement again?
July 14th, 2012 6:53pm

I never tried that since I would manually restart the process by booting up the media from USB/CD after it fails by that part. When you boot in WINPE, it would start the advertisement is what I meant. Sorry if I was unclear. For what you saying to work; you would need to ensure PXE boot is the first boot order and the advertisement has to be mandatory for the PXE to start without hitting F12. If you have a lab box, you should try it out. If that doesn't work then someone needs to do that. But the answer to your question of re-advertisement that's a no in your scenario.
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July 14th, 2012 8:58pm

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