While most of my daily consulting work is around automating everything around Systems Management and OSD, there is a good old tool that still works remarkably well if you have a single device that you need to update BIOS and TPM on, and don't want to hunt down the vendor tool and find the latest […]

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Below you find links from Dell, HP, and Lenovo models that are tested for Windows 10. Extra thanks to Mike Terrill for sending me the HP and Dell links. Note #1: Just because they are tested it may not mean they are still supported by the vendor, or haven't passed their End of Life (EOL) […]

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Every now and then you need to refresh a machine into a known state, and the MDT Lite Touch Computer Refresh scenario does just that. The default behavior of that scenario is using USMT to capture user data and settings, but what if you simply want the refresh to happen without the USMT backup and […]

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This kit builds a complete ConfigMgr Current Branch 2111 infrastructure running on Windows Server 2022 and SQL Server 2019. This kit is tested on both Hyper-V and VMware virtual platforms, but should work fine on other virtualization platforms like Virtual Box, KVM etc.

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Here is a quick guide for moving (or merging) the ConfigMgr Content Library from one drive / volume to another using the Content Library Transfer tool (ContentLibraryTransfer.exe). Starting with ConfigMgr 1806, the Content Library Transfer Tool is included with the ConfigMgr installation. Prior to ConfigMgr 1806 you would have to download the ConfigMgr Toolkit to […]

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Recent versions of Windows 10, and Windows 11, have a default 10-day Limit to go back to previous version of Windows after an upgrade (stored in the Windows.old folder). The setting can be confirmed by running a simple dism command: Extend the 10-Day Limit Changing the setting can also be done with dism, the command […]

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I happen to like HP computers quite a bit, and the HP computers that happen to support HP Sure Recover are extra shiny. These machines, primarily models from 2018 and newer, have an extra flash drive on those machines that you can modify with your own payload. This extra flash drive, named embedded multi-media card […]

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Earlier this week I stumbled across an interesting thing with ConfigMgr 2107 clients (might be applicable to other versions too). I had a set of clients configured to use a default gateway, set via DHCP. But that router was turned off, so they could not access it. For the moment I did not worry about, […]

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Stumbled across an issue yesterday and figured it would be worth mentioning. In one of our ConfigMgr 2107 environments (possible the same for older versions), client push would fail with the following error: Download Update: A recoverable error has occurred. A retry attempt will be made. Error: 0x80200010, Description There are currently no active network […]

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If you tried to integrate MDT with a new installs of ConfigMgr 2103 or later you probably learned that the MDT console extension won't show by default, even after running the Configure ConfigMgr Integration wizard. This is because of a security change Microsoft did for console extensions. To allow for the MDT extensions, open your […]

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TL;DR To use MDT Lite Touch for Windows 11 upgrades you need to add the /eula accept parameter to setup. That's easily done by using the WindowsUpgradeAdditionalOptions task sequence variable in MDT. Continue to read for more details… Background If you try to use MDT Lite Touch to upgrade a Windows 10 machine to Windows […]

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Here is a quick example for using PowerShell to make changes in offline registry in a ConfigMgr task sequence. If using a different deployment solution simply replace the logic to locate the offline image.

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The rules engine in MDT is one of the most powerful ways of applying settings during OS Deployment. It uses INI files that it parses and converts to task sequence variables. For example, this morning I was tagged in a Tweet where a fellow deployment geek was asking about how to name computers based on […]

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For most Home labs you typically want to use a workstation or server with lots of disk and memory. But if you just want a simple lab, that is accessible from anywhere in the world, Azure Labs can be a good option. Obviously running a lab full time in Azure is going to be quite […]

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Are you enrolling lots of machines into Windows Autopilot and want to speed up the process? Or, do you simply want to speed up application deployment from Intune? Well, Microsoft Connected Cache (MCC) is here to the rescue. When it comes to MCC, at least for now, you have to use the on-premises version that […]

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Thanks to all of you that joined our last FWSMUG user group meeting for 2021, and an extra thank you to Aria, Mike, Max, and Michael for presenting at the event. Below you find links to the slides and the recordings. The sessions were: Windows 11 – How to Get It and How to Manage […]

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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: In this post you learn how to configure MDT/PSD for a proof-of-concept scenario: Having machines automatically enroll into Windows Autopilot during imaging, via some clever PowerShell automation. Note #1: […]

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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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