VMware View – Windows Pool ‘Stuck’ on Customizing

KB ID 0000646 

Problem

While trying to deploy a Windows XP Pool yesterday, I hit upon this problem. Windows 7 works fine, but as soon as I tried to roll out a Windows XP pool, they stopped like this;

After a couple of hours, the whole operation timed out, and each machine shows as;

Status
{Date}{Time} o’clock {Time-Zone}:
Customization operation timed out

I tried to deploy the pool with both ‘quick prep’ and ‘sysprep’, but the results were the same. The replica is created, the pool creates the machines, but they DO NOT join the domain.

Solution

Despite my best efforts, I had to admit defeat and call VMware. Turns out they knew what the problem was straight away.

1. In my case the pool was going to be a linked clone pool. Go to the reference XP machine that you are using for this pool, and power it on.

2. Start > Run > appwiz.cpl {Enter}.

3. Locate and uninstall the VMware View Agent software.

4. Reboot the machine.

5. Download and install Microsoft Update 944043 on the XP Source machine. (Note: here’s the x32 bit version for XP).

6. Reboot the machine, (or the next step will fail and ask for a reboot!)

7. Reinstall the VMware View Agent.

8. Now if you are creating a linked clone pool, release the IP address > shut down the guest machine > snapshot the guest machine > recreate your pool.

Conclusion

VMware tell me that this is well documented in this kb article. But both at the time, and since, I’ve analysed the logs on the connection server, and the agent logs on the deployed machines, and found no mention of the following error,

“View Composer agent initialization state error (18): Failed to join the domain”

Hopefully this will help out someone stuck in the same position.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Stop Windows Asking for a Password after it Locks Itself

KB ID 0000684 

Problem

By default after a while my Windows 8 laptop ‘Locks itself’ and afterwards it requires a password to unlock it. I don’t want it to do that, I do want to be able to lock it myself, and I don’t want it to log on without a password when I log on.

To completely remove the lock screen see, Windows 8 – Disable the ‘Lock Screen’.

Solution

1. Move the cursor to the right hand side of the screen, select settings > PC Settings.

2. On the users menu, you need to press the ‘Change’ Button, below the ‘Any user who has a password must enter it when waking this PC’. But as you can see mine was greyed out, and it says ‘Security policies on this PC are preventing you form changing this setting. If yours does NOT say this press the change button and skip to step 6.

3. To remove that block, Press the Windows Key+X to bring up the advanced context menu > Control Panel > User Accounts > Reset Security Policies.

4. Reset Policies.

5. Now you should be able to repeat the process and this time press the ‘Change’ button.

6. OK to confirm.

7. Now you no longer need to enter a password, to wake up the PC.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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