You can download the Novell Client for Vista from here.

Once downloaded, double-click on the self-extracting exe and the files will be uncompressed.

Browse to the extract directory and double-click the setup.exe file.

Select the install language and click next.

Place a checkmark in the box to Accept the License Agreement and click Next.

We will select a Custom Installation.  Click Next.

Select to install both NMAS and NICI (NICI is no longer optional).  Click Next.

Click Install.

You will be prompted to install a new Network Driver, select Install.

Once completed, reboot your computer.

This is what the new Login Screen looks like.

This is the Workstation Only login screen.

This distribution point is really only for control of the initial Office installation. During the setup, Office 2007 will cache all the setup files to a local disk, and that is what it will look at if extra files, etc., are needed to install components that were not installed as part of the initial installation.

Create a folder for the Office source files at an accessible location on the network server. For example:

\servernamevolume-nameOffice2007

1. Insert the Office CD into your CD drive.
2. In Windows Explorer, select all the files and folders on the CD. Copy the CD contents to the folder on the network. This location becomes your network installation point.

Creating the Custom Installation File

You use the "Office Customization Tool" or "OCT" to customize an installation of the Microsoft Office 2007 Software. This was previously done by running the "Custom Installation Wizard" in Office 2000/XP/2003 resource kit and creating an MST configuration file. To run the OCT you need to type

\servernamevolume-nameOffice2007setup.exe /admin

This will launch the OCT which will allow you to configure the installation. Below are just a few of the items you can specify in the OCT tool.

• Default Installation Location
• Default Organization Name
• Product Key
• End User License Agreement
• The level of display that the USER will see during the installation
• Whether or not to remove previous Office Installations if they are detected
• Custom Programs to run during the installation
• Security Settings for each of the Office 2007 applications
• Setup Properties

Here are the key settings that will allow the installation run with no user intervention at all. Under the "Licensing and User Interface" section of the OCT:

• The "Product Key" must be entered
• The "I Accept Agreement" box must be ticked
• The "Display Level" dropdown box must be set to BASIC
• The suppress modal box must also be ticked

Once you have specified all the settings, you need to save the configuration to a .MSP file. I have saved my .MSP file to the "Updates" folder that is on the network share like this:

\servernamevolume-nameOffice2007UpdatesOffice2007Install.MSP

The Updates Folder
Previously when an "Office" service pack came out you would have to download the service pack for an "Administrative install" which would be a .MSP file and then you would have to apply that .MSP to the original office MSI file. The original MSI file for the Office Installation would then get patched to the latest service pack and from then on whenever you ran that MSI file a patched version of Office would be installed.
Microsoft, in their wisdom, has now made this process a whole lot easier for Network Administrators by just allowing us to drop the .MSP file updates for Office 2007 (when they are released) into the Updates folder on our network installation point and these .MSP files will then get processed as part of the installation of Office 2007.
You can now use this administrative install to install Office 2007 on a computer.  If you are using Zenworks or even if you are on a Netware based system you can use this install to deploy to your workstations.
Creating the NAL Objects For Installation
Select the container that you wish to create your Installation NAL object in and create a new "Application."
Choose a "Simple application (no .AXT, .AOT, .MSI file)."

Give your NAL Object a name like Office-2007-Installation

1. When prompted for the path, specify \servernamevolume-nameOffice2007setup.exe where "servername" is the server you copied your Office 2007 installation files to.
2. I then leave the Rules screen alone, but you can specify disk space, memory requirements, etc., here if you want to.
3. Associate the Application to a USER that will be used to test the installation.
4. Tick Display Details after creation and click Finish.

The NAL object will then open in ConsoleOne and we just need to add a few more settings to complete the Object before we can test it.

1. Click the "Run Options" tab.
2. Under the "Parameters" box you need to specify that we will be using a configuration file during the installation, this is done by putting the following:

   
   /adminfile \servernamevolumeOffice2007UpdatesOffice2007Install.MSP

The NAL Object can now be tested. You may want to tweak a few other things like putting the NAL Object in a new folder in the NAL window, adding reporting, etc.

Once you are satisfied that the installation has worked successfully then you can create separate NAL objects to Launch Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, Groove, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, Picture Manager and Publisher by just pointing the NAL object at the exe file for each of the applications. For example, I created NAL objects to point to

• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12winword.exe — this will launch MS Word 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12powerpnt.exe — this will launch MS PowerPoint 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12excel.exe — this will launch MS Excel 1007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12msaccess.exe — this will launch MS Access 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12groove.exe — this will launch MS Groove 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12infopath.exe — this will launch MS InfoPath 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12onenote.exe — this will launch MS OneNote 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12outlook.exe — this will launch MS Outlook 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12ois.exe — this will launch MS Picture Man. 2007
• C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12mspub.exe — this will launch MS Publisher 2007

There are a few things to be aware of when upgrading to Office 2007. The look and feel of Office as we knew it is gone and we now have a whole new interface to deal with which will require some end-user training to get used to. Also Office now uses the Office Open XML Formats document formats as the default Save option. The new format has been set as the default option to reduce storage space by using the compression features of the new file types as well as to improve ease of recovery.

The 2007 Office release applications can open legacy document formats as far back as Microsoft Office 97. However, earlier versions of Microsoft Office cannot open the new default document formats by default. There is a "Compatibility Pack" out now for previous versions of Office to allow you to open these XML-formatted documents. This can be found here.

SOLUTION:

The best solution I have found for this problem is to use the bootcd-11162006-v1.iso downloaded from Novell. When at the splash screen during boot select verbose mode by pressing F5. This will prompt you for the proxy address for imaging. Image as normal.

If the above boot disk does not solve your problem, you will have to delete the Utility partition that ships with the Dell system.  For some reason, this partition gets misreported in Zenworks Imaging and causes a freeze.

The best solution at this point is to download DBAN and let it run for 5 minutes.

Install the Deep Freeze Administrator Software on a computer.  Take note, you don’t have to install the Administrator program on the computer you are “Freezing”.  It’s actually recommended that you don’t.  The Administrator program is used to configure the Deep Freeze program, and create a single .exe file to be run on the computers you want to “freeze.  Once the software is installed on your computer, launch the Administrator Program.

Click on the Configuration tab, place a checkmark in the Enable Password box.  This will allow you to specify a password so that only people who know the password can unfreeze the computer.

Click on the Frozen Drives tab at the bottom.  Here you can specify which drives you wish to Freeze, and you can even specify external drives such as USB Drives or FireWire Drives.  But remember, when the system is frozen you can literally do anything you can do on a “unfrozen” or unprotected system.  You can read, write, access, delete, modify, format etc. but when you restart all those changes and modifications are gone!  Your system is restored to its original state.

Click on the Restart/Shutdown tab.  Here you can specify if and when you want the computer to restart or shutdown automatically.  Say you want all your computers to turn off for the weekend.  You could specify Friday at 10 p.m for the computer to shutdown.

Click on the Maintenance Tab.  Here you can specify a time that the computer will automatically “unfreeze” itself and go into a mode whereby you can update the Operating System through Windows Update let’s say.

Click on the Advanced Maintenance tab.  Here you can specify a WSUS or SUS server if you have one, or a batch file that you want to run, for example you could have a batch file that launches a new install of Microsoft Office using a .MST transform file.

The Thawspace is an area that you specify where you can save files and folders and these files will remain there even after the restart.

The Network tab allows you to specify whether you will be using DeepFreeze in Server Mode.  What this means is that DeepFreeze connects to a Server and can be remotely controlled using the Deep Freeze Console.  The LAN only mode means that you have to have physical access to the computer in order to unfreeze it.

The Win9x options are irrelevant unless you are using Win9x, so I’ll skip them.

Under the Misc tab you can specify whether or not you want to show the Frozen and Thawed icons in the System Tray, and a few other security features as well.

Once you have configured Deep Freeze click on the Create Programs tab.  Here you can create the various stand alone .exe files to control and install Deep Freeze.  The Full Workstation install is the program that will actually control the Freezing and Thawing process on the computer.  The Enterprise Console is the “Deep Freeze Server Management Interface”.  It allows you to control Deep Freeze installations in a Server configuration.

You have to put these two batch files in a folder that is included in your Path.  C:WINDOWS is the perfect choice for it.  You will then be able to call the program from any command prompt, the Run menu or even through a shortcut.

Put this in rc.bat:

@echo off

start c:novellConsoleOne1.2binzenRcLaunchRCConsole.exe -c"Remote Control" -a"%1" -t"0" -s"2" -w"%1.WORKSTATIONS.YOURORG" -n"YOURTREE"

Put this in rv.bat:

@echo off

start c:novellConsoleOne1.2binzenRcLaunchRCConsole.exe  -c"Remote View" -a"%1" -t"0" -s"2" -w"%1.WORKSTATIONS.YOURORG" -n"YOURTREE"

You could also start RCConsole directly from the server so you don’t need a ConsoleOne installation on the workstation you want to RC/RV from.

You can download the batch files here (rc.bat     &   rv.bat) you will just need to change the Tree and Org names.

Getting started:

1. Create a directory (e.g. bootlogo) in the linux filesystem
2. Copy the initrd file from your tftp/boot server directory to the directory created in step 1.
3. Mounting initrd

Because the bootlogo is appended to the initrd file you need to mount the file within a linux system in order to remove the original bootlogo (you have to mount the initrd and then unmount it to remove the bootlogo).

Here’s how you do it, as outlined in the docs:

1. Rename initrd to initrd.gz, enter:

   cp initrd initrd.gz

2. Unzip the initrd.gz file, enter:

   gunzip initrd.gz

3. Create another working directory for use as a mount point in the subsequent steps, enter:

   mkdir work

4. Mount the initrd file system to the /work directory, enter:

   mount -o loop initrd work

5. Unmount the initrd file system, enter:

   umount work

6. Zip the new initrd file, enter:

   gzip -v9c initrd > initrd.gz

7. Rename initrd.gz back to initrd, enter:

   cp initrd.gz initrd

4. Create a text-file called bootlog.cfg in the bootlogo directory with the following content

# This is the configuration file fo

#

# This file is necessary to specify

# the splash screen.

#

# config file version

version=3

# should the picture be displayed?

# This is the configuration file for the 800×600 bootsplash picture.

#

# This file is necessary to specify the coordinates of the text box on

# the splash screen.

#

            # config file version

            version=3

            # should the picture be displayed?

            state=1

            # fgcolor is the text forground color.

            # bgcolor is the text background (i.e. transparent) color.

            fgcolor=7

            bgcolor=0

            # (tx, ty) are the (x, y) coordinates of the text window in pixels.

            # tw/th is the width/height of the text window in pixels.

            tx=0

            ty=0

            tw=800

            th=600

            # name of the picture file (full path recommended)

            jpeg=./jpeg.jpg

5. Copy your two jpegs (silent.jpg & jpeg.jpg) to the bootlogo directory.
6. Change to the bootlogo directory and run the following command:

   splash.bin -s -f bootlogo.cfg >> initrd

7. Copy the modified initrd file to your ZENworks imaging Server (tftp/boot).

Now, when booting the imaging environment you should see your company (or whatever) bootlogo.

Behind the scenes:
The script makes a call to the UNC path of \PUBLIC-SHARE to read the file tzupdater.jar. Administrators should modify the script in notepad to reflect their own path to the tzupdater.jar file (downloadable from Sun’s site).

The script takes just over 3 minutes to complete; it allows 2.5 minutes for searching C: for all instances of JAVA.EXE. It then builds and runs a new file at the root of C: called, TZUPJRE.CMD. TZUPJRE.CMD actually calls and runs the JAR file.
When TZUPDATER.JAR is run, the script uses the -u and -v switches; if the JAVA JRE is older than 1.4x, it can not be updated by TZUPDATER (as per Sun), an error will be recorded in the TZ.JAVA.UPDATE.LOG file and the script will continue on to the next instance.

Logs to check after the 3 minutes have passed:

c:JAVA.PATHS.log will be created. It will show all of your JAVA.EXE paths.
c:TZ.JAVA.UPDATE.log will be created. It will show all output from the TZUPDATER.

The script can be run multiple times, but each time it is run it will append the TZ.JAVA.UPDATE log file.

Step 1: Prepare the USB Hard drive for use with ZENworks Imaging

1. The first step in this is to create an ext2fs partition on the external hard drive. This is to get over the 2GB file-size limitation Linux has on Fat 32 partitions. To do this I used the GParted utility in the System Rescue CD. An ISO and further instructions for use can be found here.
2. Boot to the CD.
3. Type startx to bring up the graphical interface.
4. Double-click on the highlighted icon on the right side of the screen to open the gparted partitioning tool.
5. You should create and format a partition at least as big as the image you want to create. I would suggest a minimum of 30Gb to give you plenty of space, the rest of the disk can be partitioned and formatted as NTFS/Fat32 and used with your Windows PC without affecting the ZENworks images.

Step 2: Mount the USB Hard Drive Within the ZENworks Boot CD environment

1. Attach your USB Hard Drive to the PC you want to image.
2. Insert ZENworks 7 Boot CD and restart the PC.
3. When prompted, select Manual Mode and boot as normal.
4. Start Imaging application (img).
5. Press F8 to Modify partitions. You will now see a list of devices attached to your PC.
6. Find the one that has partition type of "Linux EXT2". Take note of this as this is the device you need to mount.
7. Exit Imaging application.
8. Now you need to create a mount point for the USB hard drive. Do this by typing:
   mkdir /mnt/usbhd.
9. To mount the drive type the following command:
   mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbhd
   (change /dev/sdb1 to the device you noted earlier)
10. The drive is now mounted to /mnt/usbhd.

Step 3: Start Imaging to USB Hard Drive

1. Type img at bash prompt to load imaging application.
2. Select Make Image.
3. Select Local as destination.
4. Type path as /mnt/usbhd/<filename>.zmg
5. Start Image creation.

Step 4: Copy Image from USB Hard Drive (optional)

1. Attach the USB Hard Drive to a PC running Windows.
2. Install the ext2fsd driver (which can be downloaded from here). This will allow you to access the ext2fs (linux) file system from Windows and copy to another drive.
3. Once loaded you can view the ext2fs file system as normal and copy, delete, etc., from Windows Explorer.

To modify the Novell Login Screen, use the Novell Bitmap utility located at www.goitexpert.com/clntloginbmp.exe .  The executable is called clntloginbmp.exe.

You will have to make a bitmap image of what you want the screen to look like.  You can use Fireworks, Photoshop etc. to edit one of the existing images which are already appropriately sized.

The bitmap file should be 452 (w) x 113 (h) x 16 m colours. The Novell Client automatically resizes the height of the bitmap but unfortunately the width is fixed at 113 pixels, meaning that wide screen laptop displays will show a slightly distorted bitmap image.

You then copy the bitmap image to a folder on the hard drive.  This should be standardized as C:WindowsNWelcome.bmp.  This will make alterations easier in the future since we can merely replace the nwelcome.bmp file with another image of the same name to change the Novell Login Screen.

Also, the nwelcome.bmp is the default image copied by the Novell Client install.  We can slipstream our new image into the client install by copying the file into the NlsEnglish directory of the Novell Client Install.

Once you copy the nwelcome.bmp file to the appropriate location, launch the Novell Bitmap program and click open – browse to the c:windows directory and select nwelcome.bmp.

The selected image will then appear in the preview window.  The Briefcase icon with the checkmarks is then active.  Click this icon to Save the Novell Login Bitmap Settings.

Browse to the admin folder of the Novell Client install and double-click nciman.exe (Novel Client Install Manager.  NOTE:  You can only run the nciman.exe for the same version of Novell Client that is installed.  Meaning if you have 4.91SP2 installed, you cannot run the 4.90 version of nciman.exe on your computer.)

The following window will appear;

At this point there are two options.  If this is the first configuration of the Client you can select File – Import Registry.  This will import the settings from your workstation into the nciman utility.

From there you can configure the individual settings, the same as you would from the Novell Client Properties window.

The alternative is to go to File – Open File and to import a pre-existing configuration and import it into the nciman utility or to do it from scratch.

Once the pre-existing file is imported, you can configure the individual settings, the same as you would from the Novell Client Properties window.

When you have finished configuring the Customized Novell Client go to File – Save As and save the file in the root of your Novell Client Folder.

The easiest way to launch the customized Novell Client Installation is to use a transform file in conjunction with the acu.exe (Automatic Client Update).  The syntax for the installation can be found in the setup.bat file.

The setup.bat executes the Automatic Client Update with switches that direct the installer to use the transform file.

acu.exe /D:no /NSP /u:yorkoffice.inf

The switches for acu.exe are below;