fbreseal

[Guest]

I read the following on MSDN on an XPE SP1 article:
"... System Cloning will never start again on subsequent boots of the
client, and it is not possible to reseal a system more than once. If you try
to use fbreseal.exe on a previously cloned system, expect to see nothing but
errors. "

Is this still true with SP2? We have some cases where the customer may want
to boot the master drive (thus making it a clone). If I copied fbreseal to a
location where it would not be removed, and configured the settings as
needed, it seems they could safely re-run it. I have tried this with no
apparent side effects, but would appreciate some advice.

 

[Scott Figg]

Norma,

I have done it without any problems, and I know of many other that have also
done what you are describing below. As a matter of fact, this is discussed
in the book Windows XP Embedded Advance, which I would recommend getting
(no, I don't get paid for recommending this book). But, this week at MEDC
the author of the mentioned book said it was OK to do it once, but don't
keep doing it because he had heard of the registry getting messed up.

-Scott Figg

 

[KM]

Basically, most of the problems you may expect from running fbreseal more than once are in IIS area (and MSDTC and etc.).

Also, keep in mind that running fbreseal more than once is unsupported scenario and mainly untested by Microsoft. This means you may
(or your customers) may find more issues with that later when if will be too late to fix the image.

On SP2 fbreseal's double launch issues are getting worse.

KM

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi,

I might be asking newbie questions here, but thing that I always wanted to
know was in what scenario second fbreseal is needed and why?

FBA on master image generated some "unique" SID, right?
After you done configuring it you run fbreseal and make many copies.
When you start each clone will get it's unique SID.

Now all our devices have their own SID's, correct?

Why would someone want to generate new SID again? Do you want to use cloned
image as new master image?

Over the time I got an impression that people want to run fbresel because
they changed hardware or something like that and now they want that hardware
found by device. If that is the case then there is no need for fbreseal
User mode PnP will do the installation automatically just fine and long as
driver files are present.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[KM]

Slobodan,

Why would someone want to generate new SID again? Do you want to use cloned image as new master image?

Exactly that. Some customers wanted to have thier "cloned" images being master gold ones.
More specifically, they wanted to customize some things (branding, etc.) in thier copy of the image and then be able to properly
distribute the image including cloning.

Regards,
Konstantin

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Konstantin,

Exactly that. Some customers wanted to have thier "cloned" images being
master gold ones.
More specifically, they wanted to customize some things (branding, etc.)
in thier copy of the image and then be able to properly distribute the
image including cloning.

I never realized that customers (the ones that got XPe image) need to change
it and redeploy on all their machines. (I guess that MS did not thought
about this also, unless if it is covered by NO NO legal stuff)

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Andy Allred [MS]]

When the end user receives the device the expectation is that there is no
more work to be done to reconfigure and/or generate a "new" master.

However, if this was the expectation for the end user, then the OEM shipping
the image should not be sealing it before they deliver it to their customer.
Sysprep does not support re-running many times, since FBRseal *is* sysprep
we don't support it either as witnessed by regressions in some features like
IIS or MSDTC when running it 3 or more times.

--
Andy

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

------------------