How to Remotely Connect to a PXE Client Using pcAnywhere and Deployment Solution 6.9

These step-by-step instructions assume that you have installed pcAnywhere 12.5 on your Deployment Server and followed kb 45308: https://kb.altiris.com

Part 1: Creating the Thin Host client

1. Open pcAnywhere console go to "Advanced View" and select "pcAnywhere Tools"

2. Double click on "Thin Host Configuration Wizard"

3. Click "Next"

4. Select "Windows"

5. Leave Host name blank , select pcAnywhere as Authentication type and pcAnywhere encoding as Encryption level

6. Type a User name and password

7. Click "Save to Disk"

8. Create a folder, give a name to the executable i.e. "thinclient.exe" and click "Save"

9. Go to the folder where you saved the executable, double click "thinclient.exe" to extract the thinhost files in the same folder.

Part 2: Integrating the Thin Host client to the PXE WinPE automation

1. From the Deployment Console open the PXE Configuration utility

2. Select the WinPE automation you want to modify from the Boot Menu Option and click Edit

3. Click Edit Boot Image

4. Right-click "WinPE 2.x additional files" and select Add> File  (Browse to the folder where you extracted the Thinhost files in point I. part 1 select every file but thinclient.exe) N.B. If you wish to add multilingual support select Add > Folder and select the "locale" folder.

5. Select startup.bat and type start THost.exe

6. Click Next and Next again to recompile your WinPE, then click Finish.

7. Click OK and Save

Part: 3 Remote connection to the PXE client

1. PXE boot your client machine, when the machine becomes active in the console, Right click select Remote Control and pcAnywhereQuickconnect.

2. Type the ip address of the target machine

3. Type the username and password you created when building the thinhost in point 6 part 1

4. Here is what you should see when connected to the WinPE

5. Here is a screenshot during a cloning task with Ghost:

Conclusion
It will help System Administrator / customer to view the activity on remote machine. Also it will solve the problem of taking snapshot of the errors, gather log files and troubleshooting the problem remotely.