I was having an online discussion with a friend this week about the correct way of installing the Microsoft SCCM 2012 client on a Xendesktop (MCS) golden image. After doing some research there are conflicting actions with some blogs saying “install it and that’s it”, whilst others saying you must perform some additional work before closing your image.
I was intrigued to find the answer to this debate. So I decided to test this in my Xendesktop lab myself so I decided to install SCCM 2012.
To cut a long story short what I did notice was that if you deployed desktops after just installing the client you would start to get issues with “Bad MIF” files in your environment. If you checked the folder location C:Program FilesMicrosoft Configuration Managerinboxesauthdataldr.boxBADMIFSMajorMismatch you will see that the machines that are delivered by Xendesktop will start creating these files.
So trying this test again but with performing the additional steps below (after the installation of the client and before you close your image) there was no longer any issues with bad mif files.
- Stop the SMS Host Service
- In the Windows folder delete the file SMSCFG.ini
- Delete the SMS certificates using PowerShell – Remove-Item -Path HKLM:SoftwareMicrosoftSystemCertificatesSMSCertificates* -Force
- The Inventory Action ID 1 in WMI must be removed using wmic /namespace:\rootccminvagt path inventoryActionStatus where InventoryActionID=”{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001}” DELETE /NOINTERACTIVE
So from this I can only conclude that the best way to install the client is not to just install it. If anyone has come across this I would welcome comments.
