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Curtis W. SmithFlag for United States of America

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Cannot deploy to a PC that is seemingly unknown to SCCM

Hey All,
So I have an issue with a PC I am trying to deploy an image to using SCCM. This PC was a warranty for the hard drive so I need to get it re-imaged and re-deployed. Here is the problem. Every time I run the PXE task sequence, it says that it failed to retrieve a task sequence. Now I thought that perhaps since it was previously deployed, then maybe SCCM thought it was still in the system and thinks it is a "known" PC. The OSD task sequence is currently only deployed to the "All Unknown Computers" collection, and I don't know the name of the PC it was previously built under, so I don't have any way to confirm specifically if that is true. So I created a custom device collection, using a query searching solely on the MAC address of the machine, assuming that if it were in the DB, it would come up. There is nothing. We have a few other tools that can perform a similar function of our AD environment, and using those tools, I couldn't find the PC listed based on the MAC address. So just to see, I grabbed a USB to Ethernet adapter and tried imaging over this device using SCCM. Still no available deployments.... Now I am really confused.

I had imaged 5 other machines previously today, all of which connected, found the deployment, and deployed the image correctly, so I don't believe it is an issue with the task sequence or deployment. There is something about this PC that SCCM doesn't like and I can't figure it out. We re-image PC's regularly, so I need to make sure this isn't an ongoing issue as this will crush us in the long term.

Any help anyone can provide would be much appreciated. We have the F8 option enabled, and I have been able to use it previously for some other tasks, but I haven't had any luck finding the logs with this. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!!
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Chris Nienaber
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has the naming convention that you are now using changed since this system was imaged last? Some time the SCCM will name it according to the asset tag built into the bios. For example a Dell machine may name it according to the Service tag which is built into the BIOS. It seems like the system is still been seeing on the server and is therefore not letting you proceed. Chris is on the right track on how to find out the old name of the system.
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This is great info. I will give this a shot and get back to you guys.

As far as our naming convention, we have them named based on the user to make it easier to troubleshoot issues remotely. I'll see if I can pull that information from the logs and see what I can find. Thanks!
Curtis,
Hey Chris,
So I keep trying to copy the Query you have listed above and it is saying there is a syntax error. Am I missing something?
Hi Curtis,

Give it a try again...I added the queries as code snippets...maybe it was copying extra spaces. I also tested them myself just to make sure they are working and I didnt get any syntax errors. Make sure that you are running them under the "Overview -> Queries" node in the console and not as a query attached to a collection (it shouldn't make a difference, but just to rule that out in case its the culprit)

Let me know how you make out

Thanks
Hey Chris,
That query did the trick. I was adding it to a collection like you mentioned. When I placed it with the rest of the queries, it worked perfectly. I was able to get the MAC Address to show and I deleted it. Still not sure where it was located, but at least now I know how to get rid of them. Thanks for your help!