ConfigMgr 2007 R3 Client Hotfix Shenanigans

I’ve been spending some time recently resolving some issues I encountered getting clients in a new estate running the ConfigMgr 2007 R3 hotfix.  In a customer environnment that contained multiple DNS domains, Active Directory domains at various trust levels and a non-functional WINS environment we are heavily reliant upon the SLP role and having the SMSSLP client setting in Client Push.  I found that the default R3 client install totally wipes out the SMSSLP settings at the client leaving you with upgraded clients that can’t talk back!  You wouldn’t necessarily spot this if clients can find their MP using either AD, DNS or WINS.

So a word of warning to you that before rolling out the R3 client hotfix program you may need to add in your switches for  SMSSLP=server.domain.com and FSP=server.domain.com to the install command line if you have workgroup systems or systems in other domains etc.

If your ConfigMgr client environment does not rely on additional switches there IS an unsupported solution of having the SP2 client installed with the R3 patch using client push all in one go, by including the hotfix within a ‘ClientPatch’ folder where ccmsetup.exe resides.  The hotfix will be automatically detected and downloaded by BITS during client installation and ccmsetup.exe will install and upgrade your client to R3 for you.

Also frustrating is that getting a client to R3 level during a task sequence install isn’t as easy as it should be – the Task Sequence will fail if you try to install it as a Software Package.  The accepted solution requires that you get the patch installed at the same time as the client install within the task sequence ‘Setup Windows and ConfigMgr” step.  Within the Installation Properties you need to add in:

PATCH=”C:\_SMSTaskSequence\OSD\<PackageID>\i386\hotfix\KB977384\sccm2007ac-sp2-kb977384-x86-enu.msp”

…where the PackageID matches your current ConfigMgr client setup files package – but you knew that already.

Andy