Most antivirus products these days have a unique ID stored in the registry so that management consoles can distinguish the clients. In you are using some form of cloning in your organisation this can cause problems with clients not updating or reporting back to the management console.

This week I ran into this very issue with eTrustITM v8. Fortunately all you need to do is delete a couple of ID values from the registry before running sysprep.

For eTrustITM delete the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComputerAssociates\eTrustITM\CurrentVersion\ID

For eTrust Antivirus delete the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComputerAssociates\eTrustAntivirus\CurrentVersion\ID

Remember to do this immediately before running sysprep otherwise the clients will register again, particularly if you do a reboot before running sysprep. In my builds I usually have a sysprep.cmd that deletes keys like this and then runs sysprep.exe.

It looks like there is already a lot of good information out there about System Center Essentials 2007. Here are a few of handy spots I have found already:

• System Center Essentials @ Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/sce/default.mspx
• Pricing Information: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/sce/howtobuy/default.mspx
• SCE TechNet Forums: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1558&SiteID=17
• Management Pack Authoring (AuthorMPs): http://www.authormps.com
• SCE Wiki: http://sce.editme.com/
• Blogs
  • Advisec Blog - http://advisec.wordpress.com/
  • SCE Tips & Trips - http://blogs.technet.com/caseymck/default.aspx
  • Remote Managed Services - http://blogs.technet.com/dustinj/default.aspx
  • Pete's Management Blog - http://www.it-jedi.net/

Know of any other great resources??

In my spare time over the last few days I've been getting ready to install the System Center Essentials RTM. After getting all the pre-reqs. installed I fired off the SCE 2007 installer only to find that after getting all the way through to installing and configuring reporting setup fails. Setup then promptly rolls back.

After digging a bit I found that this is actually a known issues with the RTM and Microsoft is working to fix the issue as soon as possible. The issue is to do with disjoint namespaces. Basically your NetBios Name doesn't match your FQDN for your domain. For instance, my netbios name for my domain is AD but my FQDN is ad.internal.

There is a thread on TechNet if you are interested in following the issue: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1556029&SiteID=17