When using MDT 2013 Update 2 (Lite Touch) for your deployments the default behavior is to run every task sequence action as the local Administrator account. In addition to this, MDT also connects to the deployment share using the account you start the deployment with. Either typed in via MDT deployment wizard login dialog box, or automated via bootstrap.ini. But what if you want to run the task sequence, at least the last part of it, as a different user in order to access resources on other servers than the deployment server? Or simply to install applications as a different user.

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Over the years I have been using a few different scripts to have the task sequence send an email when the deployment is completed. For example this post: Configure MDT 2010 to send an email when deployment is completed. Another common way to do this is to use status filter rules in ConfigMgr. A good example is the Send an email when OSD completes a deployment post by Benoit Lecours.

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It’s been two great weeks, I’ve been travelling the US presenting Windows 10 trainings and sessions in Phoenix, Austin and Dallas (SCU 2016). But, it turned out I said something wrong, on all of them too, which is a new kind of record for me… Anyway I decided to use this classic joke as the headline for an apology, and clarification, to the good folks attending my Windows 10 sessions.

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A little while ago, a good friend (you know who you are 🙂 ) asked for help on creating a new Windows 7 reference image. So here it is: A Step-by-step guide to create the perfect Windows 7 reference image using MDT 2013 Update 2.

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In the 78 minute long Best of 2015 – OS Deployment, MDT, ConfigMgr  (and some other stuff) video, presented by Mikael Nystrom and Johan Arwidmark, we have gathered our favorite things from 2015. A mix of war stories, demos, events, deployments and more… Here are the links mentioned in that video (also available as annotations during the video).

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As you probably have notices, at least if you use Twitter, is that the new generation of ConfigMgr products were released yesterday (December 3). The first version is ConfigMgr v1511, and here is an hydration kit that’s builds it for you.

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You probably know that a bug in MDT 2013 Update 1 causes some very strange permissions being set on the deployment share created via Deployment Workbench. Here is a script that sets them to a working level. If needed, modify the script to fit your environment, for example, you may not use the VIAMONSTRAMDT_BA account.

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The Intel NUC  devices have turned out to be a great machine for a small but efficient Hyper-V host. The challenge is that Intel doesn’t get that, and in fact block their network adapter device drivers for Windows Server 2016. In this post you learn how to fix this properly.

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The latest Windows 10 ADK update, build 10586, was silently released a few days ago (Thanks Keith Garner for tweeting the download link). In this post you learn about what’s changed.

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In this post you learn to upgrade an existing ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 environment to Cumulative Update 2 (CU2).

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One of the many restrictions of the Windows 10 inplace-upgrade process is that it doesn’t support changing BIOS to EUFI (see my Windows 10 Upgrade Limitations post for complete listing). So, do you really need UEFI to deploy Windows 10?  The answer is no, Windows 10 can absolutely be deployed to BIOS-based machines, but some of it’s features does require UEFI. Here is the (current)list:

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Earlier today I had the opportunity to troubleshoot a ConfigMgr 2012 R2 SP1 CU1 server that could happily PXE boot Generation 1 VMs, but not Generation 2 VMs. The SMSPXE.Log had really no info than it tried to serve the wdsmgfw.efi to the client. but then nothing happened.

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Microsoft Hardware Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) 9.3 is released and is available for download.

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Finding Windows 10 drivers, or drivers in general, for the Surface 3 machine can be a bit challenging since Microsoft decided to change the search experience for their download site from poor to worse. Anyway, the trick is to Google/Bing for the Surface Pro 3 drivers which are available here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38826

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With the release of MDT 2013 Update 1 (build 8298) Microsoft pulled the download for the old MDT 2013 (without Update 1, build 5019)

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I have updated one of my Hydration Kit to use MDT 2013 Update 1 (and Windows ADK 10).

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This feels like the never ending story… I created an ADSI plugin for WinPE 2.0 back in 2007/2008-ish, and for every new release of WinPE I get requests for a new version. So here it is.

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The last few weeks I have stumbled across quite a number of customers wanting to set Internet Explorer 11 as the default browser in Windows 10.

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Here are the slides from my Windows 10 Deployment workshop at IT / Dev Connetions 2015 at the ARIA hotel in Las Vegas.

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In this post you learn to upgrade an existing MDT 2013 environment, with or without ConfigMgr integration, to MDT 2013 Update 1. The guide is divided in two parts:

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