WinPE AdoDB SQL Connection Error (429)

I was using MDT wDB for OS deployments, now I am creating the same (better) system with SCCM for wider and easier deployment. I prefer MDT integration to SCCM as it provides lots of flexibility and customizability.

Today, I wanted to use MDT DB with my SCCM OSD, so I created a new MDT Settings package and copied my old CustomSettings.ini from MDT and customized. Duplicated my current build TS and changed the MDT Settings package in respective Gather actions.

Deployed a test machine and found out no localization settings have applied. So I found the error "Unable to create ADODB.Connection object, impossible to query SQL Server: ActiveX component can't create object (429)" in logs. After a few web search I found MDT Boot image usage is recommended as it has necessary libraries to create ADODB connections.

As usual I wanted to fix that instead of using my old MDT boot image, checked WinPE_FPs folder in WAIK and seen there is a winpe-mdac.cab (MS Data Access Components) and added this package to boot image.

• dism /mount-wim /WimFile:g:\wimwork\boot.csrx64.wim /index:1 /MountDir:G:\WimWork\x64
• dism /image:G:\WIMWork\csrx64 /Add-Package /PackagePath:"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\amd64\WinPE_FPs\winpe-mdac.cab"
• dism /unmount-image /MountDir:G:\WIMWork\csrx64 /Commit

Now I have necessary libraries in my new boot image and it can connect to SQL server.

Note : Don't forget to change Netlib value to DBMSSOCN in your CustomSettings.ini if you will use SQL Authentication instead of Windows Authentication. 

Changing collation of Virtual Center Database

I needed to change VMWare ESX's Virtual Center 2 Database collation while moving the DB to another MS SQL server using different collation, you might not need to change VC2 DB collation but I think it is better to use default server collation. As usual for most databases I got the error below; because of an object dependent on database collation.

• Alter failed for Database 'VirtualCenter2'.  (Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo)
• An exception occurred while executing a Transact-SQL statement or batch. (Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo)
• The object 'sys_PhysicalIndexStatistics_Wrapper' is dependent on database collation. The database collation cannot be changed if a schema-bound object depends on it. Remove the dependencies on the database collation and then retry the operation.
• ALTER DATABASE failed. The default collation of database 'VirtualCenter2' cannot be set to SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. (.Net SqlClient Data Provider) (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 5075)

You can easily deal with this issue by using the steps below.

1. After restoring the DB on target server , browse to VC2 DB\Programmability\Functions\Table-valued Functions, right click on sys_PhysicalIndexStatistics_Wrapper then select Script Function As > Create To > New Query Editor, it will create the query needed to re-create the  sys_PhysicalIndexStatistics_Wrapper object.
2. Delete sys_PhysicalIndexStatistics_Wrapper
3. Change collation of the database.
4. Run the query you have created on step 1. , check if sys_PhysicalIndexStatistics_Wrapper created successfully.