Here is a quick guide to configure a workgroup server with PXE for MDT Lite Touch (or any other deployment solution based on WinPE). In this example I'm using a Windows Server 2019 server named MDT01 configured for being in a workgroup, and the PXE server is Windows Deployment Services (WDS). Prerequisites For this guide […]

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For the past decade or so, MDT Lite Touch have had a little know feature called Exits (or UpdateExit), which is called every time you do a full update of the deployment share. The feature was added back in MDT 2010, and was originally documented by Michael Niehaus (@mniehaus) here: MDT 2010 New Feature #17: […]

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Cloud OS Deployment, or Cloud Imaging, allows you to deploy machines without any local infrastructure other than Internet access. It can for example be used to: Image devices from directly home Image from a remote office without overloading the VPN connection, or even without having a VPN connection. Rebuild an entire infrastructure after a ransomware […]

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In my lab I use virtual machines a lot, and not surprisingly, sometimes I need to move around Hyper-V VMs to either a new disk volume, or just to a new folder on the same volume, because of disk space. Either way, with PowerShell that is a quite easy task. Here are a few examples: […]

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Here is a short PowerShell snippet for renaming a domain joined computer using PowerShell. It can be run both locally, and remote.

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While some SMB Compression code has been in Windows 10 for a while, it was not until Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 it was implemented end to end. Anyway, that just had to be tested, so I quickly deployed a few Windows 11 machines and started doing some benchmarking. In this test I'm using […]

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This week I needed to access the MDT Database via HTTPS for a cloud imaging implementation. The task at hand was to retrieve the computer name from the database by sending the computers serial number to it, but this technique can be used to read or write any settings in the database. This could have […]

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My good friend Mikael Nystrom recently posted a guide on how to setup the RestPS PowerShell Framework to run as as service via NSSM – the Non-Sucking Service Manager. In case you missed that post, you can find it here: Nice to Know – Running RestPS as a Service. Anyway, the default configuration of RestPS is […]

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Here are the slides from the Back to Basics – Windows 10 / 11 Setup Internals session that Michael Niehaus and me presented on July 22 for the FWSMUG user group. If you missed the event, you can see the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5PJLZ_WLOY Download slides: FWSMUG_07_2021_Back_to_Basics_Windows_10_and_Windows_11_Setup_Internals_Final.pptx Blast from the past Funny enough, I got a […]

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One of the students attending the ViaMonstra Online Academy reached out and asked for a spec of the lab I used for most of my demos. Well, look no further. here it is: The Machines My main research lab for the Arwidmark's consists of two HP Z840, and six Dell OptiPlex 7040 machines. Don't mind […]

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Every now and then a customer will just blurt out a statement that either blows my mind, or makes me laugh out loud. In this case, it was a ConfigMgr customer up in Canada that accomplished both 🙂 "I understand very fast as long as you explain it for a very long time" / Johan

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I'm a big fan of the Run Script feature in ConfigMgr, since it allows me to run a PowerShell script on any ConfigMgr client without having to worry about remote PowerShell being enabled, or having any special permissions on the target machine itself. Here is an example on how to invoke a run script via […]

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While more and more organizations are leaving the MDT integration in ConfigMgr behind – In favor of PowerShell driven community solutions, or by developing their own custom PowerShell scripts – There are still ConfigMgr environments using the integration. While the default MDT package that is created by the MDT console extensions for ConfigMgr is working […]

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A common set of questions in the various ConfigMgr forums is how ConfigMgr can work in environments where you either have multiple Azure and Intune tenants, or more commonly, have multiple ConfigMgr primary sites. Note: When I write multiple ConfigMgr sites, I mean multiple ConfigMgr standalone sites, not sites being part of a ConfigMgr CAS […]

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If you recently upgraded to ConfigMgr 2103 you may notice that your existing PowerShell script to create boot media fails after the upgrade. The reason is a code change that requires the New-CMBootableMedia cmdlet to run x86 PowerShell to work. According to a tweet from Mark Silvey (@configmgrdev), this will be addressed in upcoming releases. […]

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Got a question on Twitter yesterday on how to send a computer name to the MDT Monitoring Service really early in the OSD process. In fact even before the TS Environment is initialized and any ConfigMgr variables are being read. The scenario was basically that they wanted to see the real computer name in the […]

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While I highly recommend using the Modern Driver Management community solution for your driver management, here is a list of vendor driver catalogs you can download to look up model and driver details: HP Client Driver Pack Cataloghttps://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HPClientDriverPackCatalog.cab HP Client Catalog for ConfigMgrhttps://hpia.hpcloud.hp.com/downloads/sccmcatalog/HpCatalogForSms.latest.cab Dell product cabinet filehttps://downloads.dell.com/catalog/DriverPackCatalog.cab Lenovo XML cataloghttps://download.lenovo.com/cdrt/td/catalogv2.xml Microsoft Models (via Maurice Daly)https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maurice-daly/DriverAutomationTool/master/Data/MSProducts.xml […]

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With the release of ConfigMgr Technical Preview 2101, Microsoft added in support for task sequences to use the smaller ESD packages that is part of the Windows 10 Servicing feature in ConfigMgr. Obviously I was interested in seeing what the real download amount would be when using these types of packages vs. standard WIM packages […]

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To make a long story short: When configuring user rights policies in Intune with a device configuration (custom profile), you'll find that the sample provided in the docs won't fully work. It does the correct configuration on the clients, but it will show you a remediation error in the Intune portal, which is not very […]

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So…. Is it good? No. Is it dynamic? No. Does it support settings? No. Does it support applications? No. Does it have any error handling? Also, no. Does it support drivers? Barely. But it is fast… 🙂 Before Altiris, BDD, MDT, SMS, PowerShell, and ConfigMgr and other deployment solutions there were batch files…. And many […]

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