Recently I tweeted a picture of the custom Windows 10-style splash screen I'm using in an implementation of Windows as a Service with SCCM (aka in-place upgrade), and a couple of people asked for the code, so here it is! A while ago a blogged about a custom splash screen I created to use during … Continue reading Windows 10 Upgrade Splash Screen – Take 2
Category: MDT
Forcing Installation of the MDT ConfigMgr Integration WMI Classes
Today I encountered an unexpected issue installing the ConfigMgr Integration for MDT. The scenario was an environment with several SMS providers and 2 site servers in a high availability configuration (active / passive). The MDT ConfigMgr Integrations ran successfully on each of the SMS Provider servers, but on the passive site server the BDD_* WMI … Continue reading Forcing Installation of the MDT ConfigMgr Integration WMI Classes
Setting the Default Wallpaper for Windows 10 during ConfigMgr OSD
So finally I got around to doing some Windows 10 deployments (better late than never :)) and I wanted to set the default wallpaper during Operating System deployment with Configuration Manager. I've seen a few posts out there about how to do that, but they all run during the OS phase of the deployment, which … Continue reading Setting the Default Wallpaper for Windows 10 during ConfigMgr OSD
Get OSD Info Post-Deployment with PowerShell
In MDT-integrated Configuration Manager, a UDI task sequence contains a couple of steps called Branding to Reg that brands OSD variables to the registry. This can be useful for reporting, and they can be inventoried with Configuration Manager using the handy RegKeyToMOF utility. These steps can also be added manually to a ZTI task sequence … Continue reading Get OSD Info Post-Deployment with PowerShell
Prompting the End-User during ConfigMgr Application Installs
As a Configuration Manager administrator, from time to time I have to deploy an application where I need to notify the end-user of something before the installation begins. A recent example was a plugin for IE that would fail to install if Internet Explorer was running at the time. I can force-ably kill the running … Continue reading Prompting the End-User during ConfigMgr Application Installs
Free ConfigMgr Task Sequence Monitoring Tool
Update! (Nov 19 2015 - If you experienced the issue with the app appearing and immediately disappearing again, this has been fixed in the latest release v1.2.1) Today I am pleased to release a new free application for System Center Configuration Manager users: ConfigMgr Task Sequence Monitor 🙂 It is a tool for monitoring or reviewing task … Continue reading Free ConfigMgr Task Sequence Monitoring Tool
Translating Error Codes for Windows and Configuration Manager
As a Windows and Configuration Manager administrator, I often come across error codes that need translating into their more friendly descriptions. In Configuration Manager, sometimes these codes are translated for you in the log files, reports and the ConfigMgr console, but sometimes they are not. Sometimes they will be in decimal format, and sometimes hexadecimal. … Continue reading Translating Error Codes for Windows and Configuration Manager
Setting the Default Windows Wallpaper during OS Deployment
Note: For a Windows 10 Version, see this blog instead: https://smsagent.wordpress.com/2017/07/06/setting-the-default-wallpaper-for-windows-10-during-configmgr-osd/ Recently I was given an interesting task - set the default wallpaper on new computer builds with ConfigMgr OSD, but don't lock it such that users can't change it. It turns out it is simple enough to do, but it requires changing the default wallpaper … Continue reading Setting the Default Windows Wallpaper during OS Deployment
How to Quickly Retrieve Errors from OS Deployment Logs with PowerShell
I saw an interesting post yesterday by Keith Garner on using PowerShell's "Select-string" to search OS deployment logs and find errors by searching on the entry type instead of the usual way that the CMTrace utility does it - by highlighting keywords. I decided to take the idea further and create a script that will search … Continue reading How to Quickly Retrieve Errors from OS Deployment Logs with PowerShell
An Easy Way to Monitor Your ConfigMgr OS Deployments
There are several ways to monitor your OS deployments, since the monitoring service feature was introduced in MDT 2012 and above. But if you are using ConfigMgr, or MDT-Integrated ConfigMgr, then it's very easy to monitor your OSDs using a connection to the ConfigMgr database. I made a post about this before, using a Powershell script … Continue reading An Easy Way to Monitor Your ConfigMgr OS Deployments