SCCM R3 Released

Steve Rachui has a nice write up of the new features in SCCM R3

What does this advertisement status message mean?

Bredban of the "Random helpful stuff that I have found along the way" blog has kindly posted information of the what the various status messages mean in your SCCM advertisements.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/breben/archive/2010/09/30/what-does-this-advertisement-status-message-mean.asp"

DNS Alias doesn't work when pointed to a 2008 server

Say you replace a  server and just want to use an DNS alias to keep the original name of the service. When you try this on windows 2008 it may not work because of 'Strict Name Checking' that is enabled in the system registry of the Windows 2008 server you are trying to access.

We found that
1.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters


2. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:

Value name: DisableStrictNameChecking
Data type: REG_DWORD
Radix: Decimal
Value: 1

Then rebooting the server fixed the issue. 

I know this link looks to be only for Windows 2000 and or 2003 but I found it also effective for Windows 2008
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=281308

Error updating boot.wim's - Failed to Import the following drivers.

"Failed to Import the following drivers". If you are getting this error when updating the boot.wim's MAKE SURE your source drivers are still in the same location.

I found that a source directory had been renamed and therefore SCCM failed inject drivers with a very strange error message.

Failed to inject a ConfigMgr driver into the mounted WIM file

     The ConfigMgr Provider reported an error.: ConfigMgr Error Object:

     instance of SMS_ExtendedStatus

     {

                     Description = "Failed to insert OSD binaries into the WIM file";

                     ErrorCode = 2152205056;

                     File = "e:\\nts_sms_fre\\sms\\siteserver\\sdk_provider\\smsprov\\sspbootimagepackage.cpp";

                     Line = 4262;

                     ObjectInfo = "CSspBootImagePackage::PreRefreshPkgSrcHook";

                     Operation = "ExecMethod";

                     ParameterInfo = "SMS_BootImagePackage.PackageID=\"SSD00001\"";

                     ProviderName = "WinMgmt";

                     StatusCode = 2147749889;

Go into SCCM and view the source files of the drivers its failing to install. You'll probably find that SCCM can't find the source because someone has moved or deleted the folder.


In my case this affected about 50-100 drivers.. I used the View add columns to sort by source location to remove all the missing drivers and re-add the missing drivers.

High Avg Disk Queue Length and finding the Cause

http://www.iishacks.com/index.php/2008/09/12/high-avg-disk-queue-length-and-finding-the-cause/

How to remove a corrupted MSI/MST (Error 1721)

I found this out the hard way. I was working on a MSI package creating the 'Transform' (MST file). I added a custom action to register an EXE from a 'locally installed file' in the MST. Silly me I put this action into the removal section instead of the install section. Net result the MSI would install but would not remove because it was trying to run a EXE it had already run during the installation process.

This really caused me a afternoon of headaches as I could not remove the software using the MSI. it kept trying to uninstall using the now corrupted MST file (Not really corrupt just badly coded). Even if I tried to run the unistall from the source it kept using the local copy of the MST with the bad instructions.

The error in eventvwr was - '1721 MSI error'.

The solution turns out to be pretty simple we just needed to remove the local copy of the MST and then uninstall.

The Local MST can be found in two places. If the MSI was installed under the 'USER' context then you'll probably find the MST file under the Users profile. If it was installed under the 'SYSTEM' context then you should be able to find the MST file under the %windir%\installer\{GUIDID} directory.

Simply delete the MST files and then uinstall using the source MSI files.

This method worked for me.. If it works for you please leave a comment.

The ConfigMgr console could not connect to the ConfigMgr site database

The ConfigMgr console could not connect to the ConfigMgr site database. Verify that this computer has network connectivity to the SMS Provider computer and that your user account has Remote Activation permissions on both the ConfigMgr site server and SMS Provider computers. For more information, see "How to Configure DCOM Permissions for Configuration Manager Console Connections" in ConfigMgr Help.


Solution: 


Rebooted Windows 2008 server and the connection worked again.