With the increase of visitors at NewPointe, we decided a few weeks ago to deploy additional check-in stations to help with traffic flow.  One of the challenges in this project was to make these stations wireless so that they could be moved as needed.

To make this happen, I ordered 4 HP t5730 thin clients with PCI expansion units, Proxim 802.11a/b/g PCI cards, and all the usual F1 Check-In goodies. Most of our office staff is out on vacation this week (which is a great time to IT guys to get projects done), so I decided yesterday to put one of the stations together so I could create a master image and also so I could document the process.

So, for your geeky reading pleasure, here is the build process for making/imaging/prepping a F1 Check-In station our of a HP t5730 thin client with WiFi capabilities.

A couple thoughts before reading:

• Fellowship Technologies does not support Windows XPe, and therefore the processes described below come with no guarantee or warranty from Fellowship Technologies or myself.  I’m just telling you what’s worked for me.
• Proxim WiFi cards are not a must.  I used them because we use Proxim APs. However, an 802.11a wireless connection is a must if you want to have any hope of F1’s Check-In app working well in a crowded room.
• I did not discover all this by myself.  Credit is heavily due to the following folks:
  • Sid Emory from Fellowship Technologies for hanging in #citrt and helping to bring all this about.
  • Justin Moore, for creating/blogging the original documentation on for F1 Check-In on t5730s.
  • Ian Beyer, for killing off several brain cells while discovering how to get .NET 3.5 to install on his t5730.

That being said, let’s get started.

1. Attach the PCI expansion unit to the thin client using the included instructions.
2. Get all your peripherals connected except for the Zebra printer…we’ll do that later.
3. Power up. Hold the shift key down when you see the Windows boot logo and keep it held down until you see a login prompt.
4. Log in as Administrator. Password is ‘Administrator’.
5. Change the Administrator password.
6. Disable the Sygate Security Agent, and don’t turn it back on. Ever.
7. Disable EWF. Commit the overlay if prompted, and reboot.
8. Log in as Administrator again.
9. Download and install drivers for your WiFi PCI card. For our Proxim a/b/g cards, I installed both the drivers and the Proxim Client utility, but elected to use Windows Zero Config to make the actual WiFi connection. It works quite well, and you can still use the Proxim Utility to get diagnostic info from the card.
10. Get your WiFi card pointed at the proper SSID. In my experience so far, once you do this with Windows Zero Config, your selection will stick even when you image the system.
11. If you need to, download and install drivers for your touch screen.
12. Download drivers for the Zebra printer. Open the self-extracting file so that you can extract the driver files, but cancel the installer program once it starts. Connect your printer via USB and use the Add Hardware Wizard to load the driver files.
13. If you want to make any other minor adjustments, this is a good time to do it. This is where I turned on SNMP and set the community string so I can monitor these units readily if the need arises. Also, go ahead and set the machine’s hostname if you’re not planning on imaging it.
14. Reboot. While you’re at it, go find yourself a flash drive that is at least 2GB. You’re about to need it.
15. Log in as Administrator again (if you logged in as User accidently, you can just hold the shift key down while logging out, and you’ll get a login prompt.)
16. Insert your flash drive and make note of what drive letter gets assigned to it.
17. In Control Panel > System, click on the Advanced tab and open your Environment Variables. Make the following changes:
    1. In User Variables, change your TEMP and TMP values to ‘d:\’ (where d: is the drive letter that was assigned to your flash drive.
    2. In System Variables, change your TEMP and TMP values to ‘d:\’ (where d: is the drive letter that was assigned to your flash drive.
18. Go to http://support.microsoft.com/ph/548 and download the latest version of the .NET Framework. Run the installer. Installation will be SLOW, but it should work. Why? The .NET install package is 200-some MB when it’s compressed, and when the install process tries to expand that payload to TEMP/TMP, it chokes up the flash drive. However, since we changed the location of TEMP and TMP in our environment variables, the installer has a whole 2GB of space to work with.
19. Go grab a cup of coffee or a Danish (or both) while the install runs. You’ve earned it.
20. Once the .NET installation is done, reboot.
21. Download and install the F1 check-in application. Do NOT start the F1 check-app after installation. From a working check-in station you need to grab “C:\Program Files\Fellowship Technologies\Fellowship One Check-in 2.5\<latest version>? and copy that over to your thin client. The folder <latest version> will be comprised of 4 numbers separated by decimals, such as “2.5.0.9”
22. On your thin client, remove any shortcuts automatically created by the F1 installer and create a new shortcut to “C:\Program Files\Fellowship Technologies\Fellowship One Check-in 2.5\<latest version>\FellowshipTech.Application.Windows.CheckIn.exe” I dropped this shortcut in “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop” so that it was universal.

Side note: If you’re a geek (and you must be if you’re still reading), you want to know why we just did the last two steps.  Justin Moore explains it well…

By default, the F1 check-in application launches AppStart.exe which runs an update process to grab any patches/fixes from the F1 servers. This update process relies on the BITS service in Windows, which is NOT included in the HP t5730 XP Embedded image.

23. Enable EWF and reboot. Let the system automatically log in as User this time.
24. Start the F1 Check-In app and verify that it works. You’ll most-likely get an error about a printer not being available. This is because F1 defaults to LPT1 to look find a printer. Once you get to the menu, you’ll be able to select the printer you want to use. You may want to set up a “test activity” or adjust the schedule of an existing activity so that you can do just that.

Once you’ve tested everything to satisfaction, your thin client is ready to be imaged! There are a lot of different ways to go about this. I went the easy/slower route and used the HP ThinState Capture utility in the Control Panel. Do use ThinState, you’ll need a flash drive that’s 2GB or larger. Simply follow the instructions and you’ll be good to go. Also note that once you image your master machine, it will automatically sysprep on the next boot, so you’ll need to follow the prep instructions below as if you were copying the image to a new system.

When you build a new check-in station using this image, there’s some light prep work that will need to be done before it’s ready. Here’s what you’ll need to do.

1. Let the system log in automatically as User.
2. Verify that your WiFi card is connected to the proper SSID.
3. Start the F1 Check-In app. You’ll be asked to verify your church. Do so and then open an activity so that you can print a couple test labels.
4. Exit the Check-In app. Log out of Windows while holding the shift key. This will give you a login prompt instead of automatically logging you back in as User.
5. Log in as Administrator using the password you picked out before imaging. You DID change your password, right? I thought so…
6. Change the hostname of your thin client if you need to.
7. Right-click the EWF icon in the System Tray and select Commit. What this does is commit to flash any changes that were made while the system was running. This is important because the credentials you entered at the church verification screen fall into this category. If you didn’t commit this info to flash, you’d have to enter F1 credentials every time you start Check-In.

All done! Your check-in station is now ready for action.

I’d love to know whether or not this works for you, and I’d also love to know if you tweaked this process to make it better.  Drop a comment if that’s the case.