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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Windows XP Service Pack 3 Hangs on “Performing cleanup”

KB ID 0000364

Problem

Saw this a while ago, and just thought it was a “One Off”. Then on a visit to a client yesterday I saw it on both machines I was working on.

Solution

This might scare you, but you need to kill the update, don’t panic at this stage SP3 is already on.

Update 05/04/11: Before continuing please read the feedback below. Ive never personally seen any adverse effects from doing this and I’ve rolled out a few thousand service packs.

1. Right click your task bar and select “Task Manager”.

2. On the applications tab > Select the Software Update Installation Wizard > Click End Task > Accept any warnings etc.

3. Reboot the PC > SP3 installation will recover and finish, ignore any errors or warnings just let it boot up and you will be at SP3, at this point finish the good work by going to windows update and getting all the post SP3 updates.

Feedback from Patrick Wright (05/04/11)

I am sending you a message concerning your advice on the Windows XP SP3 install “hanging” at “Performing Cleanup…”.  The advice you give is to end the installation task at this point and reboot the computer.

The truth of the matter is that during the “Performing Cleanup…” step, there is indeed quite a bit of activity and updating going on.  I’ve had this step take as long as 6 hours on slower machines on our network but it finishes successfully.

For testing purposes, I tried your solution on three training machines that were still running SP2 and ran into numerous issues after rebooting with getting several programs to install that require a minimum of SP3–Adobe Standard/Professional 10 is only one example and will refuse to install on all three of the test machines that I tried your suggested fix on.  It appears that even though Windows shows in system properties to be upgraded to SP3, it is not completely finished if you stopped the install prematurely by ending that task. 

I strongly advise to consider changing your solution to simply wait out the “Performing Cleanup…” task until it finishes.  It can take a while.  I’ve found one way to help the process along is to set the process for the updater to “high priority” in task manager.  This resulted in drastically faster install times when the installer seemed to “hang” at that part of the install.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Windows XP (Safe Mode) Cannot access USB Drive(Access Denied)

KB ID 0000368 Dtd 31/12/10

Problem

A few weeks back I was working on a Windows XP machine that had been infected with some rogue AV spyware, I was having no luck installing my usual cleaning tools so I booted to safe mode, I have a USB thumb drive that I keep a set of up to date AV/Spyware tools on for this very purpose, but the machine did not want to let me open it.

 

Solution

1. OK, I admit this is not really a “Fix”, more a work around, but lets be honest how often are you in safe mode accessing USB drives? I’m guessing the route of the problem is the removable storage process won’t be running and is set this way in safe mode. So rather than start hacking the registry to get that service started. Simply right click the drive and choose “Explore” (annoyingly simple eh!).

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Windows XP – Sysprep (for imaging)

KB ID 0000599 

Problem

A client who we recently did a WDS (Windows 7) install for, needed to image a couple of Windows XP machines, (They had some software that either would not run, or was not supported on Windows 7).

They asked me for some documentation on how to do this, it’s been such a long time since I imaged any XP machine, so I took the opportunity to document it properly.

Solution

Before you begin, be aware you need to be building your reference machine with a Volume Licenced copy of Windows XP NOT an OEM or Retail copy (i.e. DONT build the machine with manufacturers rescue disks like Dell or HP). If you don’t do this you will need to activate every Windows machine that you deploy with Microsoft.

Make sure the version of sysprep you are using is at the same service pack level as the reference machine or bad things will happen.

Windows XP SP3 version of Deploy.cab

1. Build your reference machine, and configure it as you require.

2. Create a folder on the root of the C: Drive called ‘Sysprep”. Insert the Windows XP CD and locate the Deploy cabinet file. (This is ‘like’ a zip file and it’s in the supporttools folder).

3. Double click the support cab, then copy over the sysprep.exe file, the setupcl.exe file and the setupmgr.exe file to your c:sysprep folder.

4. You can now run sysprep.exe and skip to step 13. BUT if you require an answerfile (a script that will answer all the questions Windows will ask while it’s reinstalling post sysprep) then run the setupmgr.exe program, at the welcome screen click next.

5. Create New > Sysprep Setup > Windows XP Professional.

6. Fully Automate > Enter Name and Organisation > Set the Display Properties.

7. Set Time Zone > Enter the Volume Licence unlock code > If you are joining a domain, I suggest generating a random name then changing it later.

8. Set the Local Administrators password > Typical settings will enable DHCP > Supply any domain and domain credentials you need to join your domain.

9. Telephony (I just skip this) > Regional Settings > Languages.

10. Printers > Run Once commands > Additional Commands.

11. Enter a string that will go into the registry, and can be identified later > Finish > Accept the default save path > OK > At this point it looks like it’s crashed, you can manually close the setupmgr.

12. Now you can run sysprep.exe > OK > I select ‘mini-setup’ (If you don’t, it will run the welcome to windows session and play the annoying music you cant turn down!) > If you have installed applications and are going to image the machine click Reseal > OK.

Note: Factory will literally set the machine back to a ‘day one’ install of Windows XP.

The machine will then shut down and can be imaged.

Final Note: If you power it back on, it will rebuild itself and delete the c:sysprep directory. Which is fine unless you are doing some testing and realise you have to do the whole thing from scratch!

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

Windows Deployment Services (Server 2003)
Deploying Windows XP

Windows Deployment Services (On Server 2008 R2)
Deploying Windows 7

Make Vista RDP Behave Like XP RDP

KB ID 0000098

Problem

If Like me you haver to open multiple RDP sessions to lots of different clients, who all have differend domain names and passwords then the move to Vista can be a shock to the system, as far as RDP goes anyway. If you want to bend the version of RDP shipped with vista to behave like the old one did in XP you will need to the following.

Solution

1. Locate your default.rdp file (it’s usually in my documents).

2. Now open this file using notepad. Start > run > notepad > File Open > Change the file type from txt to “All files” > navigate to default.rdp and open it.

3. Paste the following two lines onto the END

EnableCredSSPSupport:i:0 prompt for credentials:i:0

4. Then Start > Run mstsc {enter} > Options > Advanced > Change server authentication to “Do Not attempt authentication”

 

* Pre v 6.00

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Windows – Explorer Has Stopped Working – Crashes Windows

KB ID 0000388 

Problem

Spend any time working in windows and sooner or later something will upset Windows Explorer, and when it crashes it has a habit of taking something with it (usually your desktop experience – or something you’ve been working on and have not saved!).

The underlying problem can be anything from some poorly coded software, a dodgy device driver, or a wayward Windows update. But you can offset the problem by running Windows Explorer in its own sandboxed process, then if it does fail, it wont break anything else.

Warning there is a slight performance overhead to doing this but if you have a reasonable machine – crack on!

 

Solution

1. Open Windows Explorer (Windows Key +E)

2. Click Tools > Folder Options > View > Place a tick next to “Launch folder windows in a separate process” > Apply.

Note: If you can’t see the Tools Menu Press F10.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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