I’ve now taken the plunge and installed Windows 8 Enterprise on my testing laptop and I’m actually quite happy with it after spending the last few months moaning about my Windows 8 Home Premium laptop! Some of the features are excellent and I’m getting used to not having a Start Menu (adding everything I need…
I’ve recently had a situation where I needed to install Windows Updates as part of the OSD process. However, the updates had to be run directly from the local WSUS server rather than from SCCM built in software updates solution. To do this, all you need to do is to install and integrate MDT. Once…
I have had a few requests lately about how to turn off the automatic updates for the Java client on users machines. There are a number of ways you can do this if you are pushing it out via Configuration Manager (or making it available via your Software Catalog) but my personal preference is to…
I’ve recently started to use Orchestrator in our live environment to conduct a number of actions but mainly to solve the issue of lack of email alerts within Configuration Manager. At the moment, we are not using Service Manager so finding an alternative to what that offers has become a task of mine. Using Orchestrator…
Microsoft have now released CU1 for SCCM 2012 SP1 which fixes a number of issues. It also includes an automated package creation to update your servers, clients and console installations, there is also a cab file for importing as a Windows Update. The download and further technical information is available from here: SCCM 2012 SP1…
We have recently had a large amount of Nokia Lumia phones appearing in the business and as you may know, they do not support mass storage, so you cannot just plug in a USB cable for them and copy videos and photos to a computer. Due to this, more and more people are asking to…
We now recommend using a new way of collecting Autodesk serial numbers, please see a full guide on the new method by clicking the link below: Autodesk Serial Number Collection using SCCM You may have seen a previous post of mine on how to report on AutoCAD serial numbers using SCCM 2012 here: Step by…
I’ve been working for Windows language pack lately, particularly in the OSD part of SCCM. So part of that is knowing what the language pack codes are for various languages. The Windows language pack codes are very useful for dictating which language packs get installed during the deployment phase of your task sequence. 2024 Update…
With System Center Endpoint Protection now having been updated to Service Pack 1 along with the rest of the System Center products, there are a few more exclusions that you should consider adding for your ConfigMgr servers. If you are using Operating System Deployment (OSD) then you should add these: This should help with offline…
I thought it was time I started to test Windows 8, I’ll keep my opinions to myself on it for now but one of the many things that does not seem to work very well on it is the Windows Activation. Every time I tried to activate Windows it failed and I couldn’t find a…
I’ve been using ConfigMgr for many years now and I’ve used OSD in every version I’ve been involved with, however, for some reason, I’ve never used USMT before. In most cases this is simply because I didn’t need to use it as my only need was for bare metal deployments but, our environment is changing…
Since I upgraded our SCCM 2012 environment to Service Pack 1 everything seemed to be working fine. But, after checking the client health monitoring, I noticed that some (a very small percentage) clients were coming back as unhealthy for various different reasons. So, I started off by looking at a few individual machines that were…
This is a guide on upgrading System Center Configuration Manager 2012 to Service Pack 1 in a lab environment. Your setup may be slightly different so remember this is a guide, so if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Note that I am using…
System Center 2012 SP1 has just gone on general release and is now available through your MVLS as you can see from the screenshot of mine below: I’ll be downloading it tomorrow and getting setup in my production environment and one of the first things I’ll be looking into is the Offline Files as this…
This query for SCCM will tell you the devices that have been discovered by Configuration Manager in the last 24 hours. This query can be amended to change the amount of days you wish to look back at for newly discovered devices by changing the last digit in the code. SQL Query More Queries Our…
I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the various ways of using queries and there are almost no limits to what you can do with a query and of course, you can then go on and use these queries for creating collections or just to supply you with the information you require. I have…
If you are looking for a query that will display all machines and their last logged on user, the below will do this for you without any prompts. This allows you to search on the data to find what you would like across the information provided by the query. The query below is the full…
We have been asked on a number of occasions how to create Configuration Manager Collections for machines on x86 or x64 Windows Operating Systems. To do this, you should use the two collection queries as below: Instructions Query to create collection for x86 machines Query to create collection for x64 machines More Queries Our full…
In previous blog posts I’ve put together a guide to automatically create the computer name in your OSD task sequences using MDT (see the link below..): Automatically generate computer name during SCCM OSD However, there is also a slightly more manual way of inputting your computer name during an OSD TS using a pop-up prompt….
This guide details how to add Products into the General Licence Statement to match up licence usages using Asset Intelligence. What this means is that you can then use Asset Intelligence reports to see what your corporate software licence usages are against what you actually have purchased. Instructions Open the Configuration Manager console. Go into…
UPDATE Although the below does help, the issue I had was actually with the WCF 3.0 Windows Update. It was this that messed up our MPs, having applied the MS “fix” (or reg hack quick fix as it really is) we have not had an issue since. I’ve had an issue for the last few…
There is an area on the Adobe website where you can download all versions of all updates in MSI format for Adobe Reader. This means that you can take these MSI’s and create any version of supersedence using the guide below: Supersede Guide The link to the FTP website of Adobe is below: Adobe Reader…
If you would like to create a report to show you the number of different Operating System’s you have, you can use this script below which should provide you with the information for Servers and the various Windows OS’s. Query SELECT CASE WHEN Caption0 LIKE ‘%XP%’ THEN ‘XP’ WHEN Caption0 LIKE ‘%Windows 7%’ THEN ‘Windows…
You may have noticed when setting up task sequence deployments for your OSD‘s or when setting up packages for the Software Catalog that you cannot run the task or program directly from the distribution point as the only option is to download the files and run from the local cache. Well, there is a setting…
We have been building a number of collections within SCCM lately so we thought we would start to build up a reference here of various collections, some simple, some more complex. We will be adding to this when we can so make sure you come back and check for updates. Computers with certain prefixes –…
One of the perils of working in IT is that I am constantly asked by friends and family the age old question; What is the best free anti-virus software? Well, there’s plenty of free anti-virus software out there and there is not really an answer to this question – there is no “best” anti-virus software, only…
If you are using an Exchange system and have self signed certificates, every year you will have to renew the certificate. An expired certificate may cause problems such as connectivity to web services, SMTP transport and Outlook prompting certificate security warnings which is extremely annoying for users and also can cause problems with Out of Office settings. To do this is very…
If you have a requirement to add any Office 2010 language packs to your SCCM 2012 Software Catalog then you may find that it is not the simplest of tasks. I’ve spent some time working on different methods of doing this and although creating the packs as an application and pushing them out is fairly…
This guide will show you what you need to do to capture a Windows XP Service Pack 3 image, which you can then capture and deploy using Configuration Manager.First of all, you need to create a full image that is ready to be captured. This is usually best to install on a virtual machine using…
If you have a Shoretel telephony environment, you may want to change the ringtone of your handset(s). You can do this with the boring built in ones or customise your handset with any tune you like. To do this, there are two methods, one for customising just one phone and another for customising all models…
If you have a Shoretel telephony environment, you may want to change the ringtone of your handset(s). You can do this with the boring built-in ones or customise your handset with any tune you like. To do this, there are two methods, one for customising just one phone and another for customising all models of…
