Hi Peter
A few things here
1. I deploy simple msi packages to nodes during both deployment and maintenance. I've found that setting up a 'Run OS Command' step for each install which runs the install directly from a network share using
msiexec /qn /i \\server\share\install.msi
works a treat
2. When you say 'deployment tasks didn't seem to work after install of the OS' do you mean any tasks in the deployment section or have you only tried a copy command. I have several bespoke tasks in the deployment section of our standard node deployment template, all of which work well, but I have seen issues with file copies in this section.
3. I have a file copy task in the maintenance section which works OK. In my case I do not map a drive first, but rather copy directly from a DFS network location to the node using something like
copy \\dfs.path\share\%computername%\file c:\targetdir\targetfilename.ext
Dan
