Displaying Front-End HTAs within a SCCM Task Sequence

I’ve often heard the phrase “MDT solves problems to issues you didn’t even know you had.”  And it’s certainly true in this case!! 

I was  looking for a process or procedure that would allow me to present my current custom OSD front end HTA to an active end-user who is logged into Windows.  Unfortunately, standard SCCM task sequences don’t allow this to happen.  To workaround this, my first consideration was to run the HTA as a prerequisite of the task sequence, but therein lay another issue with SCCM task sequences – since the HTA was run as a prerequisite Program, it was not technically within the Task Sequence environment and therefore I could not set task sequence variables, etc.

Fortunately the good folks on the MyITForum discussion list were able to steer me in the right direction.  MDT 2010 Update 1 contains a standalone executable (ServiceUI.exe) that allows execution of anything (not just an HTA) within a task sequence and enables the end-user to interact with it.  To utilize ServiceUI without integrating MDT with SCCM, perform the following:

1. Install MDT 2010 Update 1 on your local computer
2. Find ServiceUI.exe (for the appropriate target architecture) and put it into the same directory as your HTA front end script(s)
3. Create a script that will
   a)  Make a copy of the HTA on the local executing computer (only if your advertisement is set to “run from server”)
   b)  Run command: ServiceUI.exe -session:1 %SYS32%\mshta.exe C:\CustomSystemOptions.hta
   Note: it’s important to know that the options “-session:1″ will only work if the user logged into Windows has local admin rights.  My suggestion is to restart Windows and login as the local Administrator account.
4. Update your task sequence to include a “Run Command Line” as the very first item in the task sequence
   a)  Name it something like “Service UI – Custom System Options”
   b)  Set the command line as “TheNameOfYourScript.vbs”
   c)  Use the package which contains your scripts
   d)  CRITICAL: Do not set option “Time-out (minutes)” as this will cause ServiceUI to error!
   e)  On the Options tab, add a condition to check that TS variable “_SMSTSInWinPE” = false

In short, this should be all that you need to get going to display the HTA to end-user.  However, the thing that I do not yet have resolved in this all this is that when connected to a system through RDP, ServiceUI will launch the HTA, but it’s not displayed.  Still gotta figure that one out….and then update this post of course ;-)

OSD Options Chooser v2

The following custom HTA can be used during OSD when imaging computers with SCCM 2007.  It has been updated from my previous version and will do the following:

• Section 1 – for the name to be give to the computer. 
• Section 2 – for the technician imaging the computer
• Section 3 – for a ticket number
• Section 4 – for adding a user to the local admins group
• Section 5 – for selecting the computer’s time zone
  Note: additional time zones can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749073(WS.10).aspx
• Section 6 – for selecting a flavor of Acrobat as post installed software
• Section 7 – for selecting other software to be installed

Note that on the first three sections, if the option is left empty, then after clicking finish a circular prompt is done until a value is added.  Also, they set custom Task Sequence variables which you will need to use later in your process, such as in custom logging or setting a registry key for your organization, etc.

Also, remember to enable HTA support in your boot images – http://t3chn1ck.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/hta-support-in-sccm-boot-images/

Click Here For Full HTA Script!

HTA Support in SCCM Boot Images

Want to have HTA support in your SCCM 2007 SP2 boot images (with WinPE 3.0), but don’t want to implement MDT 2010?  Follow these short instructions to get yourself on your way!  When doing this for the first time, I recommend using a copy of the boot.wim and not your production boot.wim!!

The general process for doing this:

1. Ensure you have installed the WAIK for Windows 7
2. Mount the base image by using the DISM tool to a local directory share. For example,
   Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\winpe_x86\mount
   
3. Add packages, and language packs as appropriate by using the Dism command with the /Add-Package option. For example, to add the HTA package you must add both the language neutral package along with the language specific package. For example:
   Dism /image:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:”C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\WinPE-HTA.cab”
   
    Dism /image:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:”C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\en-us\WinPE-HTA_en-us.cab”
   
4. Commit the changes using the Dism command with the /Unmount-Wim /Commit option. For example,
    Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Commit
   
5. Import the .wim into SCCM and, voila, you now have a boot image with HTA support!

Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799244.aspx

HTA BackEnd Script for OSD

This post has been updated with new code. 

Please visit OSD Options Chooser v2

There are plenty of examples out there for how to get the most out of Task Sequences for SCCM 2007 OS deployment.  But I wasn’t motivated to find out how others were doing it…Until I saw a demonstration by Jarvis Davis that he presented at MMS 2009. 

From that I built my own custom HTML Application to do what I needed.  At the moment, I have not enabled HTA support in my WinPE boot images.  So the below example is purely a “BackEnd” script which simply means that it needs to run at the towards the end of the Task Sequence so that the end-operator (or end-user) does not need to wait for much of the imaging to complete.

This HTA does the following

• Field to enter in the name of user to add into the local Administrators group
• Selection for US time zone to configure Windows to use (defaults to MST, since that is where I am)
• Option to install one of 6 flavors of Adobe Acrobat
• Option to install one of 2 flavors of Project 2003
• Option to install one of 2 flavors of Visio 2003
• Option to install BlackBerry desktop
• Option to install Streets and Trips 2006

Additional things to note

• In order to add a domain user to your local admins group, the value sDomainName = “YourDomainName” must be filled in appropriately.
• All activity is logged into C:\CustomSystemOptions.log
• If one of the options to install software is selected, a Task Sequence variable is created and set to True.  To utilize this, you would need to have an Install Software task that is limited to only install of the corresponding variable is set to True.  Note: the Install Software task must be after the execution of the HTA!