Earlier today I was troubleshooting a deployment of Windows 10 v1607 via ConfigMgr OSD. During the “Use Toolkit” action, the task sequence failed with error 800700A1.

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Hi, here is a quick post with the slides and videos from my TechDays 2016 sessions in Sweden.

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By: Nathan Kofahl

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Here are links to all blog posts mentioned in the OS Deployment – Best of 2016 video with me an Mikael Nystrom.

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…just kidding. I see the question posted a lot in the community forums – what OS to use for a lab environment.  The main theme to the question is always the same thing – the technician wants to be able to use data deduplication. Deduplication, if you're not familiar with it, maximizes your storage space […]

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As you probably know, the various driver vendors do not exactly follow the same standard for labeling their models. This is where the concept of ModelAlias comes in. It just a script that normalizes vendor model names to their real model names. In this post, you learn to use ModelAlias for driver management in ConfigMgr.

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Here is a PowerShell script that integrate MDT with ConfigMgr.

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Here you find links to the recording of the Windows 10 OS Deployment tips and tricks sessions presented by Mike Terrill (@miketerrill) and me, Johan Arwidmark (@jarwidmark).

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Every once in a while you need to install SQL Server. It could be the SQL Server Express edition because you are using the Database for MDT Lite Touch, or the full SQL Server to support a System Center product like ConfigMgr Current Branch. Either way, both versions supports installing updates as part of the setup, and here follows the steps to install SQL Server 2016 with SP1 fully automated/unattended.

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This Kit builds a complete ConfigMgr v1606/1610 with Windows Server 2016 and SQL Server 2016 SP1 infrastructure, and some (optional) supporting servers. This kit is tested on both Hyper-V and VMware virtual platforms, but should really work on any virtualization platform that can boot from an ISO. The kit offers a complete setup of both a primary site server running ConfigMgr Current Branch v1606 (server CM01), as well as a primary site server running ConfigMgr Technical Preview Branch v1610 (server CM02). You also find guidance on upgrading these platform to the latest build.

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In the current version of ConfigMgr Current Branch, meaning v1610, there is a new peer to peer technology available, the so called Peer Cache. This feature replaces (and extends) the WinPE Peer caching that has been available since ConfigMgr v1511.

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Here is a step-by-step quick guide on building the perfect Windows Server 2016 reference image. This guide is divided in two parts: The first part covers how to create a Windows Server 2016 reference image in just a few minutes using offline servicing. The quick-and-dirty method. The second part is about creating a Windows Server 2016 reference image using MDT 8443. The SHINY method.

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The end of 2016 is soon upon us, but before the holidays and hopefully some well-deserved time off, it’s time for a free live event: Windows 10 Deployment – Notes from the field. 1 hour of deployment tips and tricks presented by Johan Arwidmark

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Unless you have been living under a rock the last few days, you haven’t missed the Every Windows 10 in-place Upgrade is a SEVERE Security risk blog post from Sami Laiho about the Shift-F10 security issue for Windows 10. Allowing a non-admin to get access to an BitLocker encrypted volume during an inplace-upgrade process of Windows 10.

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A quite shiny weekend turned into even shinier with the release of Windows ADK (10) Insider Preview v14965.

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During the Microsoft Ignite 2016 OS Deployment pre-conference, I demonstrated the ConfigMgr inplace-upgrade task sequence, and if you want to specify additional command-line options you can use the “not-so-easy-to-find” OSDSetupAdditionalUpgradeOptions variable. For example for using the /InstallLangPacks or /ReflectDrivers switches.

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Here is a post on how to configure the Thunderbolt Software to not require admin rights when connecting a new Thunderbolt device.

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Just wanted to post a quick reminder that ConfigMgr by default is logging info not only to it’s own log files, which are in the ConfigMgr installation directory, which is typically not on the C: drive, at least, should not be on the C: drive, but also to the IIS logs, which typically are on the C: drive. Obviously it is not good if the C: fills up, because then the site server dies. So some house-keeping is useful.

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Here is a step-by-step guide to configure a MDT Lite Touch or ConfigMgr task sequence to move a computer to another OU during deployment. The webservice used in this guide does the same job as Maik Koster’s version available here: http://maikkoster.com/moving-computers-in-active-directory-during-mdt-deployments-step-by-step but I have include the C# source code for my version, so you can review, or modify it if you want to.

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Just stumbled across the Zabbix monitoring platform (http://zabbix.com ) while working with a customer in Austin this week, so I figured I’ll set it up in my lab an test it out for a bit.

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