Thanks again for replying, I appreciate it. I've tried a few different things (these images were never sysprep'd).
The base images do have aclient, but they also need various updates applied, so I was applying those and uninstalling aclient. It'd be great to get the 7.x client on the base image, but I can't figure out how to get the 7.x client on them and deploy the image (as backup image) without the 7.x client not having GUID issues. I tried following steps here to delete GUID references prior to upload http://news.support.veritas.com/connect/pt-br/forums/altiris-agent-7x-image but had same issues. Is there a more formal connect article on removing all GUID reference in 7.x?
Also tried aexagentutil.exe /ResetGuid but it just keeps restoring GUID to what the base image GUID is.
It would be ideal if I could get the agent on the machines prior to upload because most of these machines will be in labs with deepfreeze installed post image. Deepfreeze is a software that saves a machine in a known good state and restores to good state on reboot - works great in schools. So, installing 7.x client post install, techs would have to wait around all aspects of the symantec agent to get installed before deploying deepfreeze which takes a random amount of time it seems.
I saw in another post you referenced a KB article with a vbscript to generate new GUID, but not sure how I'd push this out if the client doesn't show in the console properly (I see 1 computer in console which represents the base image and the client I restored to).
I'm assuming editing my image and adding 7.x client and uploading to 6.x and importing to 7.x doesn't do anything regarding GUIDs ? If it does, that may be my answer. Otherwise, unless I'm missing something, installing client post install may be the only option.
Which leaves me with what's the best way to install the 7.x client, assuming we're doing 100 machines or so? Can I inject the installer on the image (or copy from share), and run following script somehow, I am not understanding how CMS would be able to send the script if agent is on the machine and i'm not sysprep'ing so can't send a script that way?
msiexec /i c:\source\AeXNSCInstSvc.msi NS="NS-ServerName" /qn
thanks again for your time.