The network is Novell however we have a domain which the deployment server lives on. I thought for a bit that it might be a DNS issue so I changed the dns entries on test pc to the 2 DC's.

Jay-

The client actually is never on the "domain" -- but in WinPE when you enter your credentials, WinPE creates a connection to your Deployment Point Distribution Share. Your domain or the credentials to connect to your Deployment Server are all that matter.

Are you doing a refresh?  You say: "only if i run the LTI from within the clients's OS" -- if that is the case, just make sure you are using the account and  credentials with permission to access your Distribution Share.

Mike Dzikowski

not particularly with a refresh. it's with all Task Sequences from MS Deployment (MSD). for example, i've made a TS that only installs Applications. the only task in the list is Install Applications. I've tested it and it works.

The credentials are only accepted if the client is in the domain. else it's not accepted. and i'm 100% sure i've used the correct credentials.
i've tried the same with BDD LTI. it both doesn't matter if the client is in the domain, and what option i choose (refresh, upgrade, replace).  the credentials are accepted.

i've also checked the vb scripts that handles the authentication, but since i've no knowlegde about vbs, i cannot understand the scripts.

If you are running this from within Windows, maybe it is running in to the Windows limitation that you can't authenticate from two different users to the same server at the same time?  We've used trickery to get around this by using FQDN or IP address so we can authenticate with 2-3 accounts at the same time on the same server. (i.e. filerserver, fileserver.domainname.com, or 10.1.1.100)

Does the account you are logged in to have access to the distribution share?  Try giving it access (or logging in to the computer with an account that does have access) and see if you get the same error.

Farmerpete, you are the best!!!. you just solved the problem that i couldn't solve

i tried the options you gave me (fileserver, FQDN, ip address).

@ first it only worked with the IP address. but then i realised that when i used the ip address, DNS is not used. after that, i configured the client with the DNS address from the DNS server of the domain. From then also the FQDN worked.

so people: as Farmerpete suggested:

when running LTI wizard from within Windows, use the FQDN or IP address of the domainserver @ the field Domain.

thanks again for the solution Farmerpete

I've only tried the IP as domain when running LTI from within Windows. when running LTI from WinPE i always just use the domain name as domain. that works fine for me.
if you expierence problems with it, open a cmd window in WinPE and try to ping the DC/deployment server. if you get a succesfull ping it  states that WinPE succesfully loaded the NIC drivers, and that network connectivity exist. make also sure that your DNS settings are correct (ipconfig /all when in WinPE).

about the randomness problem, i exprierence it sometimes too. it seems that it only occurs when a previous Task Sequense is not finished succesfully, and therefor it's not cleaned up. when in WinPE, the scipts initialise the wizard base on the output the scripts generate. and when an previous TS is still on the HDD, the generated output differs from when there's not a previous TS on the HDD.

good luck with it