I’m doing this right now.  It’s not impossible. We’ve currently migrated over 
5000 windows xp workstations to windows 7 without Decrypting, or using any 3rd 
party product.  The trick is to not only add the PGP drivers to your PE Boot 
Image, but also capture a Windows 7 image with PGP installed as well.  There 
are documents from Symantec to help you do this.

Feel free to email me offline if you want to talk deeper about the hows.

Thanks,
Joshua



From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On 
Behalf Of Marcum, John
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 10:25 AM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: RE: [mssms] Wipe the PGP MBR in a task sequence

It's basically impossible to do a refresh of a machine with third party 
encryption in a single task. Managers "want" all sorts of things, some of them 
just can't be done.

From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Merenda, Kenneth
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 10:51 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: RE: [mssms] Wipe the PGP MBR in a task sequence

My manager wants it all done in a single TS, where the technicians can kick it 
off and walk away.

-Kenneth

From: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 10:43 AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [mssms] Wipe the PGP MBR in a task sequence

Can you initiate the userstate store while in windows?

Then just usb boot the machine and nuke the disk (without loading the pgp 
drivers).
You would have to add a variable or two to the TS, so it would run as a 
refresh, and would know where the userstate was stored to.

3rd party encryption tools make imaging “exciting”. &#128522;

Sent from Windows Mail

From: Merenda, Kenneth<mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: ‎Tuesday‎, ‎April‎ ‎22‎, ‎2014 ‎11‎:‎37‎ ‎AM
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

I have an in-place refresh task sequence with USMT for upgrading XP to win7.  
Our XP clients are all encrypted with Symantec Encryption Desktop (formerly 
PGP) v10.3.  Symantec provides instruction for adding the PGP drivers to the 
WinPE image, and that works.  My task sequence is initiated via USB boot media, 
and loads into that modified boot image.  A prestart command on the boot image 
(pgpwde --auth --disk 0 --p “passphrase”) unlocks the encrypted drive.  The 
task sequence begins by capturing the user state to a SMP, then runs the disk 
format and partition step.

Everything that I just described works, except for the disk format and 
partition step.  While that step does complete without error, it does not get 
rid of the PGP MBR.   The next time the task sequence restarts the computer, it 
loads into the PGP bootguard rather than into the WinPE image.  I’ve tried a 
command line step to manually run diskpart clean, and while that step also 
completes, it still doesn’t touch the PGP MBR.

After days of troubleshooting, I’ve identified that once the pgpwde –auth 
command unlocks the drive, the PGP filter drivers block access to the MBR, but 
they do so in a way that still allows tools like diskpart to complete without 
any error.  The only Symantec-supported method to get around this is to fully 
decrypt the drive –a process that can take hours or days.

I think the only solution is a 3rd party substitute for diskpart, like pldd or 
FAU DD.  I can’t seem to find one, however, that works in WinPE x64 and works 
against PGP.  Pldd is not supported in 64-bit PE (which I must use), and FAU DD 
doesn’t seem to function properly in WinPE.

The diskpart clean command actually works fine if I use it before issuing the 
PGP –auth command, but obviously I have to issue the PGP command first so I can 
capture the user data and have somewhere to store the SMSTS packages.  I can’t 
reboot after capturing the user data because I can’t modify the MBR to get it 
to boot to the WinPE image instead of PGP.

Any ideas on how to blow away the MBR?  Any known 3rd party tools that work 
inside 64-bit WinPE?

Thanks in advance,
-Kenneth Merenda




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