The WinOps Blog

Problem:

LANDesk Provisioning is a very powerful tool that has the ability to perform system migration actions in Windows, reboot into Windows PE for OS Deployment or partitioning actions, and reboot back into Windows for final system configuration actions, including reboots between software deployments, patching, etc. This process flow is especially useful in scenarios such as migrating from one OS to another while capturing and restoring a user's profile. In order for a completely unattended switch between the full Windows environment and the Windows PE environment the network boot option must be the first option within the BIOS of each computer and a PXE Representative must be on each subnet. Although this is the recommended method in many environments it is not possible due to other network boot processes in use or the simple fact that the LANDesk setup is fairly new and there are already so many computers that are not configured to network boot by default that it would be too difficult to make the manual change to the BIOS on each individual computer.

Resolution:

LANDesk Vboot is the ideal solution in the situation where PXE won't work or the decision has been made to not use it. Unfortunately Vboot is only an option for regular OS Deployment scripts, and not for provisioning. For that reason this template has been provided. It will add Vboot actions to the system configuration section and the Pre-OS Deployment section of a provisioning template. It can be utilized as an included template within a master template with other actions. The System Migration portion of this template should be run as the last action in the before booting into WinPE, where a reboot action would normally be, and the Pre-OS Installation section should be the first actions once WinPE has been loaded.

Disclaimer and Warning:

Vboot changes the active partition of a hard drive. If the network adapter driver or the hard drive driver for the hardware in the device being provisioned is not correctly injected into the WinPE image it will result in a situation where you will only boot into WinPE (and not the regular Windows install), but are not able to run any provisioning tasks or get back to booting into regular Windows. You should always test any new hardware through a PXE network boot before attempting to Vboot or you risk putting the machine in an unusable state!

If a machine is Vbooted and cannot remove the Vboot partition (causing a scenario where you always boot into WinPE) this can be resolved by injecting the drivers into the WinPE image on the core and performing a network PXE boot into the Managed WinPE or WinPE Menu option. Once Windows PE boots it will remove the temporary boot partition and restore the original boot partition. At that point the newly injected drivers will allow the Vboot option to be utilized for both PXE and Vboot scenarios.

Alternatively, you can fix VBoot by hand if you can access the hard drive, by booting into WinPE with access to the hard drive and opening a new command prompt. From the command prompt type the following commands:

diskinfo fix

diskinfo remove_vboot_partition

This will revert the device to a normal boot state.

Instructions for use:

This template does not require any variables to be set up or anything to be tweaked for use. It only requires that the core server be accessible from the client device and that the necessary files for download are left in their default location with default permissions to allow for download.

To utilize the template simply include it as the final action of the System Migration section and the first action of the Pre-OS Installation section.