Quick one - inspired by today's Power Tip on Powershell.com, I ran a comparison of different methods of getting data from WMI on a remote computer and the execution time of each. The results were interesting, with Get-CimInstance the clear winner. I retrieved the full property list for the Win32_Processor class from a remote computer … Continue reading Get-CimInstance – the WMI Champion
Category: 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
Reading CCMEval Results Directly from a ConfigMgr Client with PowerShell
Since Configuration Manager 2012, a scheduled task is created by the client installer that runs "CCMEval.exe" periodically to check that the client is healthy and all the components it depends on are functioning as they should be. A number of checks are performed and if anything is found amiss, the default setting is to attempt … Continue reading Reading CCMEval Results Directly from a ConfigMgr Client with PowerShell
Client Health: Find all CCMEval Failed or Unknown
Keeping your ConfigMgr clients healthy is an important task for an SCCM administrator. Here's a SQL query that will find all devices in ConfigMgr that have been active in the last 7 days, but have either failed their CCMEval or have "unknown" status, ie no CCMEval results. I like to add SQL queries to PowerShell functions … Continue reading Client Health: Find all CCMEval Failed or Unknown
New tool! Reliability Viewer for Windows
I am pleased to release a new free GUI tool today to assist in troubleshooting Windows systems - the Reliability Viewer for Windows. It is based on the concept of the built-in Windows Reliability Monitor, but can be used to display data from both the local or remote systems, which the Microsoft tool cannot do. … Continue reading New tool! Reliability Viewer for Windows
Send a Weekly OS Deployment Summary Report with PowerShell
Here's a script I wrote that sends a simple summary of ConfigMgr OS Deployments in the last week as an HTML-formatted email. It gives you the start and finish date/time, duration and model for each computer deployed (where the information is available in SCCM), and a list of any steps in an error state for … Continue reading Send a Weekly OS Deployment Summary Report with PowerShell
Redistribute Failed Package Distributions in ConfigMgr with PowerShell
Here's a little script I wrote based on one written by David O'Brien that allows you to redistribute failed package distributions in Configuration Manager by selecting which packages you want to redistribute. First the script queries WMI to find packages that are not in the "installed" state, ie the distribution is not successfully completed. It … Continue reading Redistribute Failed Package Distributions in ConfigMgr with PowerShell
Add a Device to a Collection during a Task Sequence
Here's a "quick and dirty" way to add a computer to a collection during a task sequence. It uses PSRemoting to your ConfigMgr Site server and will happily run where only PowerShell 2.0 is installed. It uses the Run Command Line step to invoke PowerShell and run the necessary commands on the site server to … Continue reading Add a Device to a Collection during a Task Sequence
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
Parse the WindowsUpdate.log on Local and Remote Computers with PowerShell
The WindowsUpdate.log, which logs activities of the Windows Update client, is not the easiest of log files to parse through but it's handy one for finding details about update installation successes and failures. To make searching this log file easier both on the local computer, a remote computer (where PS remoting is enabled) or groups of computers, I … Continue reading Parse the WindowsUpdate.log on Local and Remote Computers with PowerShell