SMS Collections based on Organizational Units in AD

I want to create SMS Collections based on Organizational Units. However, when I go to "System Resource", our SMS 2003 site database does not have data for the "System Group Name", "System Container Name", and "System OU Name."

Discovered that the [Active directory system GROUP] discovery populates these values. Turned in on today and "bam"!, there they were!

Windows 2003 Server Time Synchronization

Several of the client Windows XP machines are out of synch in regards to the system time. Even the windows servers were out of synch with themselves. To resolve the problem, I needed to use w32tm utility to set the time, not the "net time" command.


A note from http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservergen/thread/db179f69-2a9a-40d9-88de-2b370f7dc863 was helpful, stating that " the “Net Time” command is supposed to work for Windows 2000 based machines. It uses the protocol called Simple Network Time Protocol or SNTP which means it’s a “simple” version of NTP and lacks some of the more complex algorithms which provide more accurate and stable time for NTP clients. For Windows Server 2003 / Windows XP or above machines, they use NTP instead of SNTP. "


The following two commands actually synched the time:

w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"clock list"
w32tm /config /update

Modifying WIM image

I needed to change the background that is present when the Windows is starting. I could change it from within Windows, but not from the WIM image I created. It has to be simple!!!

Well, it was.....

The System Default Profile
When Windows NT is running on a computer that no user is logged on to, a dialog box appears, prompting you to press CTRL+ALT+DEL to log on. This dialog box and other aspects of the Windows NT environment at this point, such as the screen's background color and its use of wallpaper and screen savers, are controlled by the system default profile. The settings for this profile are stored in System32\config\default.

Group policies not updating on XP clients

The Active Directory servers are outside of the firewall. All the systems that are behind the firewall are not updating with AD group policies. They are giving the following error:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Userenv
Event ID: 1054

Description:
Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name for your computer network. (An unexpected network error occurred. ). Group Policy processing aborted.

ContentAvailable ignoring update with no DPs for content request

I received this message "ContentAvailable ignoring update with no DPs for content request" from SMS 2003 client systems that were behind a firewall, using private addresses, such as 172.35.0.0. These systems were on the public side, but was changed a few months ago.

Simply solved the problem by putting the private subnet in the boundry for our SMS Site server. Everything is fine now.

Windows Media Server - server-side playlists

I want to have videos playing full shows and clips when user connects, playing at different times throughout the day.

Ran accross the usage of "server-side playlists". Will see how it is done and post here.

ADMT - only installs on Server

Okay, why didn't I know that ADMT only installs on the Windows Server OS? I need to used ADMT in an environment where we have client PC located behind a firewall. Obviously, the AD servers ouside of the firewall cannot reach PCs behind the firewall, so I decided to take my laptop (running Win7) behind the firewall and install ADMT.

Needless to say, ADMT would not install on XP or Win7, but must be installed on Server. So, I am installing MS Virtual PC with a Server2003 instance, but do not plan to make it a AD server. We will see how it goes....