WindowsPE imaging hangs

[Christopher Nowell]

Greetings folks, here's my problem.

I'm testing out the new RDP 2.2 with WindowsPE 2005. I've got 80 RDP licenses, legal WindowsPE and Windows2003Sp1. No bugus Illicit market mods. Just straight from the source.

I run an image creation task and the blade shuts down beautifully. No probs there. It restarts, booting to Automation just fine and runs through the WindowsPE XP look alike startup.

Then, up comes the new Altiris imaging GUI with a DOS like pop-up saying "Initializing Windows PE". That's where it stops. Hangs hard.

I'm going back to the tried and true Windows98 bootdisk but if anybody knows what might be up or is having the same issue, post a reply.

[Jason Ralph]

I am having the exact same problems with WINPE and the two HP servers I have tried sofar. I have an ML350G3 and a DL385.
I can't even get to the part to run scripts through PXE it locks on setting up Network cards.
Please any help on this would be appreciated.
Thanks,

[Christopher Nowell]

After much trial, error and phone conversations, I spoke with somebody at HP who gave me a various honest run down on WinPE and Altiris Deployment 6.5. He stated that 6.5 combined with PE are not ready for prime time. The skinny of it was that the problems do not lie with the PIM but that HP was committed to making it work. He didn't think it would be anytime sooner than six months though. Apparently it's a doozy of an integration issue.

It's straight up honesty like that which keeps me satisfied with the product. Yeah, it would be great if it worked right the first time, but if it doesn't then don't jerk me around. I like that they told me the problem in detail without insulting my intelligence, made it clear that there wasn't anything I could do and explained that it was going to be a while. That way, I can better shuffle my integration testing and deployment schedule and still make the boss man happy.

BTW, I didn't detail the issue(s) here because the details may or may not be covered by our NDA. If you have one, call your HP Account Manager and poke for details if you care to.

[Matt Duguid]

Hi there,

We have exactly the same issue (WinPE hang on reboot after dragging scripted OS to server object) and have been searching for weeks for the answer, happy to see your post and have some sort of explanation at last!

I find it weird that they would include a half working WinPE portion with the latest version of Altiris. You would think it would be better to not include it until it worked 100%...we spent numerous hours trying to contact Altiris and other support avenues to find out if it was a bug.

Anyway we have an answer now so just need to wait for the fully working version.

Cheers,
Matt D