When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
[Last Reviewed: 2019-06-04] At MMSMOA 2019, I enjoyed a great presentation by Tom Degreef and Kim Oppalfens about Configuration Manager security. It was an amazing session, and I want to share some of the learnings I took away from it. But first, a heart-to-heart Extend the peace branch to your network and security teams. I’ve … Read more
[Last Reviewed: 2019-04-25] Here’s a scenario: you just finished writing the world’s most amazing PowerShell script, and you want to deploy it to a collection of workstations in your enterprise. You run it, just to see the wall of red text telling you that unsigned scripts are not allowed. What if we signed that script? … Read more
[Last Reviewed: 2019-04-25] PowerShell scripts, ClickOnce VSTO applications, .NET applications, even Java Deployment Rulesets. What do they all have in common? You can sign them with a code signing certificate! What’s Code Signing? When you digitally sign an executable or script, you’re guaranteeing that the code hasn’t been altered or corrupted since it was signed. … Read more
[Last Reviewed: 2019-04-24] If you’re like me, one the first things you do when you get a new device is wipe and reload it. OEMs have gotten better about the amount of value added software they preload on machines these days, but I still prefer starting fresh and building on top of that. If you … Read more
If you’re working on a device that has an embedded OEM Windows product key, you can run the following to retrieve it: “That’s nice,” you say, “but can we do that in PowerShell?” But of course! Jacob
[Last Reviewed: 2019-02-20] If you attempt to PXE boot a virtual machine using VMware Fusion, you might see this error: Some quick research showed that I’d have better luck using the ‘vmxnet3’ network adapter rather than the default ‘e1000e’ adapter. I had no problem adding the vmxnet3 to our WinPE image, but… it was Friday. … Read more
Here’s a scenario: you work for a global (intergalactic?) organization. Across your fleet of devices, you’ve got many different languages. You’re looking for a clever way to keep all these machines updated when new builds of Windows come out. Let’s say you’ve got a device that is localized for de-DE. If you were to attempt … Read more
[Last Reviewed: 2018-11-26] Do you need en-US language packs added to ConfigMgr for your multi-lingual IPUs? Do you need it done quickly? Check out New-WULanguagePackPackage.ps1, available on GitHub! This script: Reads an XML file containing the path to language packs on Windows Update (and some metadata, like the Windows version and build) Downloads the language … Read more
[Last Reviewed: 2018-11-19] Recently one of our technicians mentioned in passing how nice it would be if TeamViewer’s console showed usernames in addition to computer names, so searching would be easier. That’s a fantastic idea–let’s use the TeamViewer API and ConfigMgr’s User Affinity to do this! Prerequisites: Tokens, Please Before we begin, we’ll need a … Read more
[Last Reviewed: 2018-11-17] Here’s a scenario: You’re a global organization looking to upgrade your remaining fleet of Windows 7 machines. Your fleet contains multiple locales–your Frankfurt location runs de-DE, and your Shanghai location runs zh-CN. If you were to run an IPU on these machines using your en-US image, you’d discover pretty quickly that the … Read more