Error “Cannot edit the object, which is in use by Site P01” in SCCM 2012

Today I want to edit an task sequence within SCCM 2012 and I received the following error message: “Cannot edit the object, which is in use by site P01”. Mmmm….that’s strange!! I’m the only Sysadmin with an ConfigMgr 2012 Management Console. To unlock this object, I’ve used an query within SQL.

1.) Open the SQL Management Console and navigate to the ConfigMgr database
2.) Open a new query
3.) To view all the locked objects, type the following query:
select * from SEDO_LockState
Execute the query and watch te results
4.) We see one object that is locked
5.) Note the ID of this specific object
6.) To unlock this object, type the following query:
delete from SEDO_LockState where ID=’ID of the object’
Execute the query and watch the results
7.) Now the object is succesfully unlocked and you’re able to edit the task sequence

Locked_01    Locked_02    Locked_03

Locked_04    Locked_05    Locked_06

Locked_07

Upgraded my homelab!!

Finally my new home lab environment is up and running. After building a copple of hours, my new monster was ready to rock!! I’ve installed Windows Server 2012 with the Hyper-V server role….and WOW, it really rocks!! The next few moths I’m going to build a big environment, with System Center 2012, Exchange 2013, Windows Server 2012 and many, many, many more cool products!! 🙂

* AMD A8 3870K 3.00GHz 4MB FM1 Box
* Asus F1A75-V PRO AMD A75, SATA600 RAID, HDMI
* Corsair 32GB PC3-14900 DDR3 SDRAM Vengeance (4x 8GB, 1866MHz)

IMG_3306    IMG_3307

Passed the 70-246 and 70-247 exams. Now officially MCSE 2012 Private Cloud

Yesterday and today I passed the 70-246 and 70-247 exams! Right now I’m officially Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert 2012 Private Cloud (MSCE 2012). After a couple of months preperation, reading books, reading blogpost and building, building and again building some lab environments, the big day was there!! After two hours, I hit the the final button….YES, passed the first exam! Today I also passed the second exam!

With the upcoming TechEd Europe 2013 event in Madrid, it’s a great timing to have the MSCE 2012 Private Cloud status in the pocket. Do you know where I’m going to dream about this night….right, my own private cloud!! 😉

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How to: Create multiple boundaries in ConfigMgr 2012 within a few seconds

When you’re installing and configuring a new ConfigMgr 2012 environment, one of the steps is to configure the right boundaries for your environment. Sometimes there’re only a few boundaries you have to create, but what if there’re several boundaries to configure. Are you gonna click that much….Let’s create some Powershell command to do the job for us.

1.) First of all we are going to import the ConfigMgr 2012 Powershell module. Use the x86 Windows PowerShell, bacause x64 is not supported!!
Import-Module “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminConsole\bin\ConfigurationManager.psd1”
4.) Make a connection to your Primary Site server
Set-Connection P01
3.) Now we are going to create some new boundaries. In this example a whole IP subnet (172.16.10.0 and 172.16.11.0)
New-CMBoundary -Name “Client VLAN1” -Type IPsubnet -Value “172.16.10.0”
New-CMBoundary -Name “Client VLAN2” -Type IPsubnet -Value
“172.16.11.0”
5.) Create a new boundary group. In my example “Main Building”
New-CMBoundaryGroup -Name “Main Building”
6.) The next step is to add the boundaries to the right boundary group
Add-CMBoundaryToGroup -BoundaryName “Client VLAN1” -BoundaryGroupName “Main Building”
Add-CMBoundaryToGroup -BoundaryName “Client VLAN2” -BoundaryGroupName “Main
Building”

Now the job is done. How easy and fast was that…

CMB_01    CMB_02    CMB_03

CMB_04    CMB_05    CMB_06

CMB_07    CMB_08    CMB_09

CMB_10    CMB_11    CMB_12

ConfigMgr 2012 client installation on Windows 8 returns an error 0x800b101

Last week I have been working on a Windows 8 deployment with ConfigMgr 2012. After configuring a new task sequence, I was able to deploy the first Windows 8 image to one of many virtual desktops. The deployment went fine, until the ConfigMgr client installation. Okay, so what about now. Let’s have a look in the CCMSETUP.LOG on the client. I received the following error:
“Couldn’t verify C:\WINDOWS\ccmsetup\MicrosoftPolicyPlatformSetup.msi authenticode signature. Return code 0x800b101”.

After some search on Microsoft TechNet, I found the solution for this problemn. Microsoft has released a hotfix for this error (KB2801987) . You have to request this hotfix by e-mail.

After requesting and downloading the hotfix, you have to install this hotfix on your primary site server. It wil create a new update package named “KB 2801987 – server update – P01”. If you browse to your client installation files on your primary site server, you’ll also see that the timestamp has changed. So the ConfigMgr client installation files are also updated! Make sure you update the distribution point(s) with the new version of the ConfigMgr 2012 client installation package.

Now you’re able to succesfully deploy Windows 8 with the ConfigMgr 2012 client.

WIN8_01    WIN8_02    WIN8_03

WIN8_04    WIN8_05    WIN8_06

WIN8_07    WIN8_08    WIN8_09

WIN8_10    WIN8_11    WIN8_12

WIN8_13    WIN8_14    WIN8_15

WIN8_16    WIN8_17    WIN8_18

Adding PXE support in ConfigMgr 2012 failed

Last week I setup a new ConfigMgr 2012 infrastructure. Everything works just fine, until I added PXE support to my distribution point. After I checked the “Enable PXE support for clients” box, the SMS_DISTRIBUTION_MANAGER process started the installation of all the components needed for PXE support.

  • The vcredist are being installed
  • The WDS Server rol gets installed
  • PXE Provider is initialized
  • The WDS Service gets started and configured

A couple of minutes later, some errors are in the logfile DISTMGR.log. After I rebooted the ConfigMgr server, the following error message displayed:
“There is a file of folder on your computer called “C:\progam” which could cause certain applications to not function correctly. Renaming it to “C:\program2″ would solve this problem. Would you like to rename it now?”

Let’s navigate to the C:\ drive, and there is the file. Renaming the file to C:\program_old and rebooted the server again, everything works fine and the WDS service is starting correctly now. Also the logfile DISTMGR.log is fine now. It looks like a bug within ConfigMgr 2012, but I didn’t figured it out yet…

PXE_DP_01    PXE_DP_02    PXE_DP_03

PXE_DP_04    PXE_CP_05    PXE_DP_07

PXE_DP_06    PXE_DP_08

How to: SCCM 2012 and installing drivers by computer model using WMI query

When you have multiple computer models in your organization, you have different driver packages available. Each model has his own driver package. You don’t want to use a task sequence per model, but only one task sequence with multiple models in it with different driver packages. This can be accomplished by using a WMI query within your task sequence.

One mayor thing you have to know are the exact computer models in your organization

1.) Create a new task sequence. (in my example Windows 7)
2.) Add a task Apply Driver Package
3.) Select the right Driver Package
4.) Navigate to the Options tab
5.) On the target PC open the command prompt
6.) The next thing you want to know is the hardware model of the target PC.
WMIC ComputerSystem GET model
In my example it is an Dell OptiPlex 9010 as you can see
7.) Navigate back to your task sequence in the Options tab
8.) The WMI namespace will be root\cimv2
9.) The WQL Query will be SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem WHERE Model LIKE “%OptiPlex 9010”
10.) Now the right driver package will be installed during your task sequence.

SCCM_DRV_01    SCCM_DRV_02    SCCM_DRV_03

SCCM_DRV_04 (2)    SCCM_DRV_05    SCCM_DRV_06