System information

Host Installation

When a third-party utility program, such as Symantec Norton Ghost ™ or PowerQuest

Drive Image, is used for operating system imaging, the following considerations must be

taken into account when including the Host as part of an operating system image:

Generate unique HostIDs

Each the Host installation is identified by a unique identifier, called the HostID. This

identifier is used by the Gateway to identify a Host, even as other information about the

Host, such as the machine name, may change. This identifier contains no additional

information and has no use other than to allow the Gateway to identify individual Hosts

on the network. The HostID is a GUID, a 16-byte number with a text representation like

“{C8E645A4-AF10-46f7-838B-A75105C8AA13}”.

If the Host is installed on an operating system that is then imaged, all of the machines will

end up with the same HostID. the Gateway will recognize the first Host it sees with this

HostID, but ignore any others with the same HostID. The result is that many Hosts will

not show up in the Gateway directory.

NOTE: This problem occurs independently of how the imaging or replication is done, and

affects the Host v4.0 and later installations.

There are two strategies for dealing with this issue:

 The preferred solution is to prepare the Host installation for imaging before creating

the operating system snapshot to be duplicated. Just as you use the Microsoft-provided

“SysPrep” utility to prepare the operating system, you can use the Host “HostPrep” utility

to prepare the Host before imaging. This is described in the next section.

 If a deployment has been completed and duplicate HostIDs exist on the network, the

Host “RmHostID” utility can be used to remove the duplicate HostIDs and cause the

affected machines to be assigned a new (and unique) ID. This is described later in this

document.

Prepare the Host and operating system for imaging

the Host includes a utility program named hostprep.exe to address issues with

operating system imaging. The Hostprep utility appears in the Utilities file.

To avoid the problem of having duplicate HostIDs, the hostprep utility must be run to

delete the ID before the operating system image is captured.

NOTE: You must prepare the Host software for imaging just before you use the

Microsoft-provided SysPrep utility to prepare the operating system.

After the machine is set up and all Host settings are configured, and immediately before

running the Microsoft-provided SysPrep utility, run the hostprep.exe utility from a

command prompt. The optional command line argument “-y” can be used to avoid a

prompt to continue. When HostPrep runs, it stops the Host service and prepares the Host

for imaging. It is critical that the Host service not restart before the operating system

image is captured because when the Host starts, it undoes the actions completed by the

HostPrep utility.

For more information about operating system imaging, please see the Microsoft TechNet

Desktop Deployment Center at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/desktopdeployment/

HostPrep command line syntax

HostPrep accepts a command line flags that control its behavior: