[Fog] Installing FOG

[TechieWils]

I use fog and love it, I use single disk, single partition and it does work. I found you have to run fogprep and fog client and set it to os type windows 7 on the web site. It should work as long as you havent changed or did anything to the 100mb system partition. If I can offer any help I'll gladly do my best.

[Jobos]

If I fogprep the machine will I be able to go back to and make changes if needed? I wanted to take an before sysprep in case of problems.

[3s-gtech]

Newest versions of FOG don't need fogprep (I've done many machines now without). You can image it across to a new HDD without sysprepping as a backup.

[Jobos]

That's what I want to do but I'm getting the error

Windows fails to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause

when I restore.

[TechieWils]

Ah, I've had that. When I've finished setting everything up before I install fog or sysprep I take a full disk image as a backup like you want to. I set the os to vista and take a image single disk multiple partition. All in the web management. Windows isn't starting as it doesn't take the 100mb partition. Once the backup image is taken install fogprep, fog client and run sysprep and capture the image as windows 7 single disk single partition. I did read you don't need fog prep but I always run just in case and works for me. I'll attach a guide I used to this post in the morning. Can't do it from my phone sorry.

[TechieWils]

As promised here's the guide I used to start me off building a Windows 7 image:

WINDOWS 7.pdf

[Jobos]

As promised here's the guide I used to start me off building a Windows 7 image:

WINDOWS 7.pdf

A very useful guide indeed! I've followed it so far as I already had my reference workstation made and I didn't go with adding the driver pack as my machines are the all HP 7900's but with a few different size hd which is why I need fog to resize but I'm still getting the same error when imaging

Windows fails to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause

The only other problem is the default profile is not configured correctly. Before syspreping there is only one admin account working which I set up as I want the default profile to be but although I use Copyprofile TRUE in the answer file it's not working. On the reference machine the administrator and guest accounts are both disabled so I'm assuming sysprep will take the settings from the only working account?

[3s-gtech]

Getting the admin accounts right on imaging is a game. Took me a fair bit of testing, but I now have it so sysprep deletes the administrator account (no changing that), then when running the OOBE it re-creates it complete with password, enables it and logs straight in. I've never tried with any other account, as I have no use for a default profile (I use mandatory profiles from the network), but I'm not sure what you're trying will work.

[morganw]

Windows fails to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause

Is the computer free from any hidden OEM restore partitions or similar?

[TechieWils]

Good thinking Morganw, also make sure your sysprep file has persistent pnp devices = true (something along those lines)

I might be going over an old point so apologies but in fog you have set the image to single disk with win 7 as the guest os on the machine tab. If it's set to any other os it won't handle the 100mb partition automatically. Also what version of fog are you running, personally I had nothing but problems with win 7 till I upgraded to 0.32

[Jobos]

@3s-gtech
I'm going to try enabling the administrator account and using that to make the default profile. From what Google tells me I might get lucky.

@morganw
Nothing hidden apart from the default partition win7 makes.

@TechieWils
Yes I've set the answer file to keep the drivers and that works fine. I'll double check the fog setting when I'm back there next week.


Thanks everyone for their help with this

[TechieWils]

No worries, thought it's about time I started paying back all the help this forum has given me.

Like I said fog 0.29 and 0.30 never worked right for me. Let us know how it goes Monday.

[3s-gtech]

0.29 and 0.32 have been fine for me with 7, up till now. My 0.32 install has managed to spontaneously break, to the point where I can't do anything involving the tftp server, despite not having touched it, for permissions errors. Uploading an image with FOG sets the created file as root (not the fog user) so the FOG service can't access the file, and has a strop. Not had any luck changing the umask, and I can't get the ftp service to run as fog despite setting that. If necessary, I'll just nuke the whole thing and start again, my images aren't precious.

Jobos - using the administrator account may work better for you. With the right arguments in unattend.xml it plays pretty nicely. It will always get deleted though, but recreating it is easy enough. You'll obviously lose all settings, but you should be able to transfer these to the default user during sysprep (never tried it myself, I cheated!)

[morganw]

If this workstation is new it may default to using EFI boot and the Windows installation may partition the disk using GPT instead of MBR. That could cause problems, you can check in the disk management MMC snap-in in Windows. Also try booting FOG into debug mode and list the partition layout with fdisk -l. Run this before and after imaging to see if partition table stays consistent. If you are using GPT partitions then fdisk can't work.

It is possible to install Windows 7 from the install media and not have the separate 100MB partition. This might be worth a go if you run out of other things to try.

[Jobos]

Had a big rush job on so not had time to do any further testing the profile but running fdisk -l seems to give an error.

100_0168.JPG

So it looks like the hidden partition is stuffed