The OS displayed is GSS console is blank for certain versions of Windows embedded.

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

When upgrading to Ghost Solution Suite 3.3 and later certain OS's like Windows POS Ready 2009 Embedded may not display correctly on the console compared to in older versions of the console like 6.9. 

No error but the OS version may not be listed in the Ghost Console GUI

Environment

Ghost Solution Suite 3.3 and later. 
Windows POS Ready 2009 Embedded
 

Cause

The AlVars.ini file holds the versions of OS's that will be displayed in the console GUI compared to the clients CurrentVersion registry key inventory that is supplied by the clients to the server.  Some versions of windows like embeded are not included in the AlVars.ini provided in the later versions of the GSS server. 

Resolution

The AlVars.ini can be updated to include up to 16 characters to be used as the display version of the OS for any OS's that are desired.

The windows client will retrieve it's OS information from the "ProductName" registry key located at 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion.

Taking this information use a text editor to modify the AlVars.ini from the servers installation path\Altiris\eXpress\Deployment Server\AlVars.ini.     If Windows POS Ready 2009 Embedded was not displaying the OS the following line could be added to allow it to display properly.   It has been observed that there is a limit of 16 characters for the display name so do keep the information displayed under 16 characters. 

Windows POS Ready 2009 Embedded = Windows XPe

After saving the changed to the AlVars.ini close and reopen the console to allow the data to be refreshed.