Duplicate SCCM Client GUIDs / Full Client Reinstall

Posted on April 14, 2009 Updated on February 25, 2013

This was an issue that I came across from our recent upgrade from SMS 2003 to SCCM 2007.  While we were still using SMS, some systems had been cloned/p2v’d from a production system to a virtual then renamed.  It wasn’t caught at the time, but it appears SMS may have been unable to automatically give the cloned SMS clients a new GUID.  When we migrated to SCCM, these clients were fighting over which of them was the real and live system in SCCM, such that some client records would suddenly disapper from the console…then if they’re client was fixed, a different client record would disappear.

However, simply uninstalling/reinstalling the SCCM client was not resolving the issue.  After some digging around, I found a couple of utilities to help rip out the SCCM client and force a new GUID to be assigned.  I brought these utilities together and created a simple executable to coordinate the process.  This was created with the old, but very reliable, SMS Installer, the code below is for that, but can easily be rebuilt as a vbscript.

If you have any questions about this process, feel free to leave me a comment and I can respond!

1. On your computer, download and install the SMS 2003 Toolkit v2
2. In the directory containing your SCCM client install, create a subdirectory (such as “SOURCE”)
3. From the Toolkit directory, copy ccmdelcert.exe and tranguid.exe to the newly created subdirectory in previous step
4. In the SCCM client install directory, create an executable or script that does the following in order
   • Execute ccmdelcert.exe (wait for process termination)
   • Delete the file %WINDIR%\SMSCFG.ini
   • Execute ccmsetup.exe /uninstall (wait for process termination)
   • Delete directory %WINDIR%\system32\ccm\
   • Delete registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCMSetup
   • Delete registry key HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS
   • Execute ccmsetup.exe (wait for process termination)

Below is the ‘code’ for the SMS Installer executable that I built to facilitate this.

Document Type: IPF
item: Global
  Version=6.0
  Title English=Duplicate SCCM GUID Repair
  Flags=00000100
  Languages=0 0 65 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
  LanguagesList=English
  Default Language=2
  Copy Default=1
  Japanese Font Size=9
  Start Gradient=0 0 255
  End Gradient=0 0 0
  Windows Flags=00000100000000010010110000011000
  Message Font=MS Sans Serif
  Font Size=8
  Disk Filename=SETUP
  Patch Flags=0000000000000001
  Patch Threshold=85
  Patch Memory=4000
  FTP Cluster Size=20
end
item: Check Disk Space
end
item: Set Variable
  Variable=ROOT
  Value=C:
end
item: Get Environment Variable
  Variable=WINDIR
  Environment=WINDIR
end
item: Execute Program
  Pathname=%INST%\SOURCE\ccmdelcert.exe
  Flags=00000010
end
item: Delete File
  Pathname=%WINDIR%\SMSCFG.ini
end
item: Execute Program
  Pathname=%INST%\CCMSETUP.exe
  Command Line=/uninstall
  Flags=00000010
end
item: Insert Line into Text File
  Pathname=%WINDIR%\system32\ccm\temp.txt
  New Text=TEMP
  Line Number=0
  Flags=00010000
end
item: Delete File
  Pathname=%WINDIR%\system32\ccm\temp.txt
  Flags=00001100
end
item: Insert Line into Text File
  Pathname=%WINDIR%\system32\ccmsetup\temp.txt
  New Text=TEMP
  Line Number=0
  Flags=00010000
end
item: Delete File
  Pathname=%WINDIR%\system32\ccmsetup\temp.txt
  Flags=00001100
end
item: Edit Registry
  Total Keys=1
  Key=SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCMSetup
  Root=130
end
item: Edit Registry
  Total Keys=1
  Key=SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SMS
  Root=130
end
item: Execute Program
  Pathname=%INST%\CCMSETUP.exe
  Flags=00000010
end