Greg Ramsey at myITforum.com

Dell Systems and Advanced Format Hard Drives

gramsey — Mon, 02 May 2011 06:31:00 GMT

My colleague Warren has been burning the midnight oil over on DellTechCenter to ensure that you are well prepared for when Dell begins shipping advanced format hard drives (which is very very soon). If you are responsible for Operating System Deployment, I highly recommend the following resources:

Deploying Dell Systems with Advanced Format Hard Drives from DellTechCenter

Warren leads a chat on Tuesday May 3rd at 3pm CT from DellTechCenter about advanced format hard drives

If there's one thing I suggest you do, it's this: Start your change control process to perform the following tasks asap:

Update the WAIK to 3.1 and then update your OSD boot disk, or apply KB 982018 to your WinPE boot disk.
Deploy KB 982018 to all Win7, Server 2008 R2 systems (or upgrade them to Sp1)
Update Intel Mass Storage Drivers in your OSD Process, if necessary

The easiest way to avoid any advanced format drive headaches is to get your build process updated asap. Join Warren's chat on Tuesday for more information.

Greg

Interesting issue with thumbs.db

gramsey — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 03:02:00 GMT

I'm surprised I just ran into this today – seems easy enough to run into a long time ago. I was working in ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2, and was receiving failures when sending content to a distribution point. Looking at distmgr.log, I saw the following errors:

CreateFileW failed for \\servername\sharename\thumbs.db

Failed to add the file. Please check if this file exists. Error 0x80070020

Thumbs.db is a hidden file that contains a thumbnail cache for the current directory. I tried to delete the file, and received an error that the file was in use by Windows Explorer. I decided to test this same process in ConfigMgr 2007, and encountered the same issue (which is why I'm surprised I haven't experienced this issue before). Finally, I terminated and restarted my Windows Explorer process (explorer.exe), and then could successfully delete the evil thumbs.db, and could then update my distribution points successfully.

To prevent this in the future, you need to disable the creation of the thumbnail cache. You can read more for how to disable this using either folder options or group policy. Both links refer to Windows 7, but the same applies to Server 2008R2. You would need to disable this feature on any system you use to browse to the package source. This issue obviously doesn't occur all the time, but is something to be aware of moving forward.

Greg

Preparing Server 2008 R2 for ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2

gramsey — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:15:00 GMT

Half the battle of installing ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2 is installing Operating System Components and SQL. Here's a very brief set of installation instructions to get you up and running (in your lab environment) faster. Be sure to test these in a LAB. Review the ConfigMgr 2012 Release notes as well as the Supported Configurations Document before installation. To download ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2, you must become a member of the open beta at https://connect.microsoft.com/ConfigurationManagervnext.

Before you begin, have your licensed SQL 2008 installation source in D:\SQL2008

Here are links to download additional requirements – download to the following directories.

.Net Framework 4.0 Full	D:\NETFx40	download
SQL 2008 SP1	D:\SQL2008SP1	download
SQL 2008 SP1 CU10	D:\SQL2008SP1_CU10	download
WSUS 3.0 SP2	D:\WSUS3.0SP2	download

*Important note before you begin* For consistency, I recommend launching ALL applications with "Run as Administrator." For running PowerShell Scripts, R-click on PowerShell in the start menu, and select "Run as Administrator" (not run as a different user, but "As Administrator"). Same for running other commands, like the SQL installation command below – open a command prompt using "Run As Administrator" – and one more time to be sure we're all on the same page, Always use Run as Administrator.

The following instructions *Assume* you use a clean Server 2008 R2 build (RTM and SP1 are supported for Beta 2).

Install .NET Framework

Run the following commands from an elevated PowerShell command prompt:

import-module servermanager

add-windowsfeature NET-Framework

Run the following command from an elevated command prompt:

D:\NETFx40\dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe /passive /norestart

Reboot Server – a reboot is required before installing SQL.

Install SQL

Bypass App-Compatibility Warnings

From an elevated Windows Command Prompt, run the following two commands to prevent “Warnings” for running SQL on non-Supported OS Platform (you will be supported once you’re on SP1) – this isn’t entirely necessary, unless you want to make a fully-unattended installation:

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags" /v {45da5a8b-67b5-4896-86b7-a2e838aee035} /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f

reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags" /v {f2d3ae3a-bfcc-45e2-bf63-178d1db34294} /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f

Install SQL 2008

This is one very long command line – it will perform a silent installation of SQL with Required services enabled for ConfigMgr:

D:\SQL2008\setup.exe /q /ACTION=Install /ERRORREPORTING=0 /FEATURES=SQL,RS,AS,IS,SSMS,ADV_SSMS,Conn /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER /SQLSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\System" /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS="BUILTIN\ADMINISTRATORS" /SQLSVCSTARTUPTYPE=Automatic /AGTSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\System" /AGTSVCSTARTUPTYPE=Automatic /RSSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\System" /RSSVCSTARTUPTYPE=Automatic /ASSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\System" /ASSVCSTARTUPTYPE=Disabled /ASSYSADMINACCOUNTS="BUILTIN\ADMINISTRATORS" /ISSVCACCOUNT="NT AUTHORITY\System" /ISSVCSTARTUPTYPE=Disabled

Note that the above command line will install the SQL instance to the default directory, which will be under c:\Program Files\ - to install the Default instance to a different path, add the parameter /INSTANCEDIR="D:\MSSQL\" where D:\MSSQL is the path you want for the instance. you can also slipstream SQL 2008 SP1 if you add the following: /PCUSource=D:\SQL2008Sp1 - see important KB note here.

Install SQL 2008 Sp1

D:\SQL2008SP1\SQLServer2008SP1-KB968369-x64-ENU.exe /ALLINSTANCES /QUIET

The Command Prompt will return long before the upgrade is complete – Use Task manager to watch the running process.

Install SQL 2008 SP1 CU 10

D:\SQL2008SP1_CU10\SQLServer2008-KB2279604-x64.exe /ALLINSTANCES /QUIET

The Command Prompt will return long before the upgrade is complete – Use Task manager to watch the running process.

Verify SQL Installation Success

Open SQL Server Management Studio, and run the following query against the “Master” database:

SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('productversion'), SERVERPROPERTY ('productlevel'), SERVERPROPERTY ('edition')

With CU10 installed, you should have a Product Version of 10.0.2799.0 and Product Level of “SP1”

Install Required Windows Components

Run the following commands from an elevated PowerShell command prompt:

import-module servermanager

add-windowsfeature FS-FileServer,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Dir-Browsing,Web-Http-Errors,Web-Http-Redirect,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Log-Libraries,Web-Request-Monitor,Web-Http-Tracing,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Filtering,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Dyn-Compression,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Metabase,Web-WMI,BITS-Compact-Server,BITS-IIS-Ext,RDC,RSAT-Web-Server,RSAT-Bits-Server

After the components install, you will receive a message as to whether a restart is required at this time.

Install WSUS 3.0 Sp2

D:\WSUS3.0Sp2\WSUS30-KB972455-x64.exe

Install ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2

Now you should be ready to install ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2. I'll post a follow-up article describing that process.

I welcome your feedback – if you have suggestions for improvement, please send to me, and I'll update the post.

FAQs (I'll update if you send me installation questions)

Q: Do I need to Configure WebDAV?

A: No, WebDAV is not used in ConfigMgr 2012 (yeah!)

Q: Can I use Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1 for my site server?

A: No, not supported at this time.

Greg

ramseyg@hotmail.com

ConfigMgr 2007 Now Supports Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

gramsey — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:07:00 GMT

Hotfix Information (KB2489044) – at the time of this writing, the hotfix is not freely downloadable. The KB instructs you to contact Microsoft Customer Service and Support. You can successfully download http://premier.microsoft.com if you (and your company) have access – go to "Download a Hotfix", and specify KB2489044.

This hotfix updates the "Supported Platforms" that are used in Program Properties and Task Sequences, as well as Desired Configuration management and Software Updates. Here are the very brief installation instructions:

Download and Extract the hotfix.
Execute the .msi against your primary site server(s): SCCM2007-SP2-KB2489044-ENU.msi
Install the hotfix on all secondary sites.
The instructions do not indicate that you should run this on any remote admin console, but I ran it on my Windows 7 system fine and verified the files updated successfully. (FYI, I did see the new platforms in my admin console for Program Properties prior to installing the hotfix on my console, but decided to do so anyway….)

Here's a quick pic of what you'll see after installing the hotfix on your site servers…

Greg

ramseyg@hotmail.com

[edit March 30 2011] - Removed the step mentioned above to manually run the .sql statement, as it's no longer required - you can see the information in the hotfix installation log (in users' %temp% by default), the supported platform hotfix takes care of this for you now. Running the .sql statement was old school, but is no longer required. Big thanks to my colleague Kent Agerlund for setting me straight!

How To: Inject Drivers from USB During a ConfigMgr Operating System Task Sequence

gramsey — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:39:13 GMT

ConfigMgr OSD does a great job of injecting drivers 'on the fly' into your OS Deployment process. For example, you can create task sequence steps with conditional statements to apply drivers for a specific model. That's great for your standard build, but how do you handle those one-offs, those non-standard builds? Here's a process that you can you for those non-standard builds, or for that hardware that you're testing, but haven't quite committed to being a standard yet. All we need is a vbScript, raw drivers, and an additional step in your task sequence (haven't tested with MDT, but should work there as well). The following process ONLY works on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. If there is enough demand, I'll create a similar script for previous Operating System versions.

Step 1 – Create a USB folder with raw drivers for the desired hardware.

Create a folder in the root of a USB drive named "ExportedDrivers"
Copy desired drivers to this folder. You can create subfolders to help with organization if you'd like. Please note that *everything* in the ExportedDrivers AND ALL SUBFOLDERS will be processed, so try to keep the folder structure organized, and to ONLY include the desired raw drivers.
Your folder should look similar to this:
We have a few extra folders here to keep things organized, but you can just put them in the root of "ExportedDrivers" if desired.

Step 2 – Create a package with ImportCustomDrivers.vbs

Create a new Package (or just add this file to an existing package)
R-click, and select 'save as', and remove the .txt, so that it's a .vbs ImportCustomDrivers.vbs.txt
Send to DPs.

Step 3 – Add new step to OSD Task Sequence

This step should run in WinPE, just before all other "Apply Driver Package"or "Auto Apply Drivers" step.
Your Task Sequence step would look similar to this:
Depending on your environment, you may want to enable the 'continue on error' checkbox on the Options tab. If the script attempts to import a driver that does not apply to the current operating system, it will return a failure exit code.
If you have ADDITIONAL "Apply Driver Package", or "Auto Apply Drivers"steps, and you want to skip these steps if we import drivers from the USB, enter a conditional where Task sequence variable "OSDCustomDriversApplied" not equals "True" (this variable is set in the .vbs when it runs).

Now that you have your task sequence configured, insert the USB drive into the test system and launch a test build. At the "Add Custom Drivers…" step. you will see a command prompt that shows the status of the drivers that are being injected.

In WinPE, two log files will be created in X:\Windows\Temp\SMSTSLog:
- OSD_CustomDrivers.log – this is the log for the vbscript
- DISMCustomImport.log – this is the out file from the DISM command to import everything under USBDRIVE:\ExportedDrivers\
The log files will also be copied to the ConfigMgr log file directory to allow for post-image troubleshooting.

Again, this process is meant for those one-off scenarios. If you plan to fully support a platform, be sure to handle driver installation using ConfigMgr driver management.

Greg

ramseyg@hotmail.com

Win32_Product Is Evil.

gramsey — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:08:43 GMT

I'm a bit of a fan of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), but today's post is a bit of a 'buyer beware'. I'll sum it up, and then provide some detail and give you some ideas of where this can be a very bad thing. For starters, go to a TEST system (Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista or later), launch a PowerShell command prompt (run as administrator so that you have full rights), and run the following command:

get-wmiobject win32_product

(PowerShell is used for simplicity here – this issue occurs in every way you query Win32_Product )

Win32_Product will return some great information about each windows installer-based application. In fact, you can even view additional properties by running get-wmiobject win32_product | select * . However, even though you called a basic query of the Win32_Product class, you actually performed a consistency check of each installation. Take a look at the Application Log after running the previous command (event viewer), and you will see something similar to this:

EventID = 1035

Source = MsiInstaller

Details = "Windows Installer reconfigured the product…. "

Each of these entries is for a Windows Installer product, and you can see in the details that each product was 'reconfigured' – luckily, if you have healthy Windows Installers, everything should be happy, and the consistency check just confirms that. If however you have systems that are unhealthy, or the installation has been altered in some way, this could cause a failure during the consistency check, or a failure of the application after the reconfigure.

The bottom line is that I expect when I query a WMI namespace, that ONLY a query occurs. Unfortunately, with Win32_Product, that's not the case.

Here's a KB article for Vista and Server 2008 that explains a scenario with using Win32_Product as a WMI Filter in group policy – the same info applies when querying Win32_Product manually or with an enterprise systems management tool.

Event log message indicates that the Windows Installer reconfigured all installed applications

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/974524

The article only applies to Vista and Server 2008, but I can confirm that the same thing happens on Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

Now that we've talked about the general issue, let's talk about where things can go bad with using Win32_Product in ConfigMgr.

Win32_Product Use	Potential Issues
System Center Update Publisher (SCUP)	Using Win32_Product in an Applicability rule will cause every system in your site (regardless of collection membership) to run the query, which causes the consistency check/repair. You can't control this on a collection level. All clients that are configured to the Software Update Point will perform the scan. This custom update automatically replicates to all children sites with Software Update Points. Each time a scan is run, the Windows Installer consistency check/repair will run.
Desired Configuration Management	Creating a Configuration item (CI) with win32_product will cause every system that is targeted with the CI to initiate the consistency check/repair each time the baseline rule is evaluated.
SMS_DEF.MOF (hardware inventory)	Untested, but I believe the consistency check/repair will occur each time hardware inventory runs for all clients in the site.
ConfigMgr 2012 (beta 1) App-Model Deployment Types	If deploying to USERS, the consistency check/repair will occur when a user attempts to install the software from the software catalog. If deploying to DEVICES, I believe the consistency check/repair will occur when the client receives new/modified policy for the deployment.

So as you can see, in the ConfigMgr world, there are many ways to use win32_product that can cause you to have a bad day. So be careful with win32_product!

Greg

ramseyg@hotmail.com

New Web Report–Show Update Compliance Status for all Systems in a Collection, Based on Update List

gramsey — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:45:20 GMT

We had an internal request to "Show me software update compliance state for each system in a collection, based on an Update List". There are a couple canned web reports available that got me close, but not exactly what I need. So here it is in case anyone else is interested.

Here's a shot of the report:

declare @CI_ID int; select @CI_ID=CI_ID from v_ConfigurationItems where CIType_ID=9 and CI_UniqueID=@AuthListID

SELECT     rs.Name0 AS MachineName, rs.User_Name0 AS LastLoggedOnUser, asite.SMS_Assigned_Sites0 AS AssignedSite, rs.Client_Version0 AS ClientVersion,
                      (CASE cs.Status WHEN 0 THEN 'Compiance State Unknown' WHEN 1 THEN 'Compliant' WHEN 2 THEN 'Non-Compliant' WHEN 3 THEN 'Conflict Detected' ELSE 'Null' END)
                       AS State, cs.StatusTime
FROM         v_ClientCollectionMembers AS ccm INNER JOIN
                      v_UpdateListStatus_Live AS cs ON cs.CI_ID = @CI_ID AND cs.ResourceID = ccm.ResourceID INNER JOIN
                      v_R_System AS rs ON rs.ResourceID = ccm.ResourceID LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      v_RA_System_SMSAssignedSites AS asite ON asite.ResourceID = ccm.ResourceID
WHERE     (ccm.CollectionID = @CollID)
order by rs.Name0

r-click and download the SQL ComplianceforCollectionandUpdateList_SQL.txt

r-click and download the Web Report (rename to .mof) ComplianceforCollectionandUpdateList.mof.txt

Greg

ramseyg@hotmail.com

How To: List all servers used by your ConfigMgr Infrastructure

gramsey — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:24:39 GMT

Here's a quick PowerShell script to show all servers used in your ConfigMgr Hierarchy:

        1: $myServers  = get-wmiobject  SMS_SystemResourceList `

       2:    -namespace root\sms\site_LAB –computer LABServer

       3: $myServers | select-object servername -unique `

       4:    | sort Servername | out-gridview

You can alter that script a little to show all Roles for each server:

       1: $myServers  = get-wmiobject  SMS_SystemResourceList `

       2:    -namespace root\sms\site_LAB –computer LABServer

       3: $myServers | select-object servername, RoleName  `

       4:    | sort Servername | out-gridview

To run these in your environment, launch in PowerShell 2.0 with proper rights to query your hierarchy, and replace "LAB" with your Central site ConfigMgr Site Code, and replace LABServer with your Central site server name.

Happy Scripting,

Greg

ramseyg@hotmail.com

Get-PingStatusList.ps1–Ping Hundreds of Systems Quickly Using the Start-Job Command in PowerShell

gramsey — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 04:25:10 GMT

Here is a good example of the power of PowerShell 2.0. Say you have list of several systems, and you simply want to see if they respond to a ping. This script leverages PowerShell’s “Start-Job” cmdlet to launch multiple background jobs at one time, as opposed to the old-school sequential ping check. I have used this script to perform a ping check to thousands of systems in a matter of MINUTES! This Script requires PowerShell 2.0 and the .Net Framework 3.5. As configured, the script will run a maximum of 50 concurrent jobs, so it will ping the first 50 systems, and as each job completes, it will add more to the queue.

Download the Script!

Save the Script to C:\PowerShell\Get-PingStatus.ps1
Launch PowerShell 2.0, and navigate to C:\PowerShell
Create a text file that contains a list of all systems you want to ping, one system per line:(for our example, it’s C:\Temp\TestComputers.txt)
Run the following Command from the PowerShell Prompt to show help information: get-help .\Get-PingStatusList.ps1 –detail
You will see from the help that you can execute .\Get-PingStatusList.ps1 C:\temp\TestComputers.txt The output would appear similar to Example 2 in the integrated help:
Upon completion, the output will appear similar to the following (hiding real computer names to protect the innocent):
And finally, a gridview will display with the servername and a status code for each one. You can use this gridview to easily sort, filter, and copy the contents to a spreadsheet if desired.

Learn more about the start-job cmdlet.

Download the Script! (Rename to .ps1)

Try it out, and send me your feedback! ramseyg@hotmail.com

How to: Expire a Custom Update in WSUS Using PowerShell

gramsey — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 05:58:57 GMT

The Queen of SCUP and I had some Orphans in WSUS that needed to be cleaned up. Not just one or two, but for fun let’s say “More than 10”. First, what is a WSUS Orphan? For the sake of this post, it’s the following:

You use SCUP to publish a (non-expired) custom update in WSUS.
You then DELETE that custom update from SCUP.

This is a bad situation. You published an update to WSUS, so that update is now active (and if you’re running ConfigMgr, you’ll pick up that update on your next WSUS Synchronization). If you’ve used SCUP, you (hopefully) know that you must EXPIRE an update in SCUP, and then PUBLISH that expired update in order to expire it in WSUS (and then eventually ConfigMgr). But if you performed the steps mentioned above, you can no longer expire the update, because it has been deleted from SCUP. Jason Lewis posted a great set of instructions for how to clean up an orphan – this is great for one or two items, but if you have “More than 10”, that process could be quite painful. Here’s a quick PowerShell script that can be used to delete an update. With a few more steps, you could import a list of unique update IDs and loop through part of the script to expire multiples with little effort.

        1: #Run this from WSUS for central site server

       2:  

       3: #Load .NET assembly

       4: [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration")

       5:  

       6: #Connect to WSUS server

       7: $wsusrv = [Microsoft.UpdateServices.Administration.AdminProxy]::GetUpdateServer()

       8:  

       9: #Get all the non-microsoft updates 

      10: $otherupdates = $wsusrv.GetUpdates() | select * | ? {$_.UpdateSource -ne "MicrosoftUpdate"}

      11:  

      12: #This is a slightly-ugly way to do it, but the only way I could.

      13: #Look to see if there's an update with the unique guid "28b65392-0beb-44b9-bf77-eb8e8e8c2d8a" - and display the info

      14: $otherupdates | % {if ($_.id.updateid.tostring() -eq "28b65392-0beb-44b9-bf77-eb8e8e8c2d8a") {$wsusrv.GetUpdate($_.id)}}

      15:  

      16: #Expire the Update with unique ID = "28b65392-0beb-44b9-bf77-eb8e8e8c2d8a"

      17: $otherupdates | % {if ($_.id.updateid.tostring() -eq "28b65392-0beb-44b9-bf77-eb8e8e8c2d8a") {$wsusrv.ExpirePackage($_.id)}}

Line 14 is are used to display the update status, so if you are running this to expire multiple updates, you could comment it out with the pound sign (#).

As Jason explains in his blog post, the cleanup process from WSUS is not immediate, and ConfigMgr will not pull the expired information until the next SCHEDULED scan (just launching “Run Synchronization” will not work-it must be a scheduled scan).

Download the Script

More information on the ExpirePackage Method.

Greg

Microsoft Daylight Savings Time Updates

gramsey — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 19:23:31 GMT

My colleague Angie and I were searching for “The Latest” Daylight Saving Time Cumulative Update and stumbled onto the following page:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_hottopics

If you deal with time zones around the world, you may want to bookmark that page for future reference!

Greg

Show All “Succeeded” Advertisement Counts for the Past 30 Days

gramsey — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:06:46 GMT

We rely on Run Advertised Programs (RAP) quite heavily at Dell – we have approximately 400 applications available in RAP, available to almost all systems. I was asked to provide a quick report that shows the number of successful installs for each Advertisement over the past 30 days, so I thought I would share with you!

SELECT     COUNT(*) AS Count, v_ClientAdvertisementStatus.AdvertisementID, v_Advertisement.AdvertisementName
FROM         v_ClientAdvertisementStatus LEFT OUTER JOIN
                      v_Advertisement ON v_Advertisement.AdvertisementID = v_ClientAdvertisementStatus.AdvertisementID
WHERE     (v_ClientAdvertisementStatus.LastStateName = 'succeeded') AND (v_ClientAdvertisementStatus.LastStatusTime > DATEADD(day, - 30, GETDATE()))
GROUP BY v_ClientAdvertisementStatus.AdvertisementID, v_Advertisement.AdvertisementName
ORDER BY v_Advertisement.AdvertisementName

Enjoy!

Greg Ramsey | DELL

ConfigMgr MVP | DellTechCenter | @ramseyg | greg_ramsey@dell.com

Intel Live Chat on vPro and System Center–8/12/2010

gramsey — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:32:11 GMT

“This chat’s focus is on Microsoft System Center and will give you the opportunity to chat with Intel experts and your peers in the industry. Come discuss how you are using System Center and Intel vPro technology in your enterprise. This is a great opportunity to ask questions of your peers and to share your best practices.”

More info here: http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-5355

ConfigMgr R3 Feature–Right-Click, Add Resources to a Collection

gramsey — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:39:27 GMT

*Note – This post is based on ConfigMgr R3 Beta 1 Code.*

You may be familiar with some of the home-grown right click console extensions, such as one I created a long time ago for SMS 2003, and then modified for ConfigMgr 2007, also from my colleague Rick Houchins, and good friend Matthew Hudson, and most recently a post on System Center Central. I’ve met several admins who use these tools on a daily basis. FINALLY, we have some of the functionality built into ConfigMgr! One of the new features you will find in ConfigMgr R3 is the ability to Right-Click a Collection, and select Add Resources:

When you click Add Resources, the following dialog appears:

It has a similar look and feel to searching in Active Directory (at least it does to me…). I was slightly disappointed to see it default to “IP Network” (if you are too, you should file a bug on Microsoft Connect), as I almost always use “System Resource”. Once I change the resource type to “System Resource”, I then enter a name (or partial name) into the first textbox, and hit “Search”. If found, the name, domain, and Site Code appear in the “Search Results” box. Click Add then OK to add the system. You can also extend your search criteria by selecting Advanced—you will then be able to select additional attributes based on discovery data, such as AD Site Name, IP Address, System OU Name, etc. Also worth noting is that the membership rules are added as Direct Membership Rules.

If you’re like me, you often need to add more than one system at a time to a collection. You could easily accomplish this using the community tools mentioned above. Although it’s not obvious, you can actually perform a “bulk insert’ using the new Add Resources feature. Simply add each name (or partial name), separated by a comma. Here’s an example of two partial names:

I can then select Add and OK to add all the systems in the search result to the collection.

As you may already see, there’s one drawback to that as well, because you need all systems on one line in a comma-separated format. We commonly receive list of systems to add in email, or an Excel spreadsheet, one system per line. You can easily transpose in Microsoft Excel, but if you’d like to transpose with PowerShell instead, use the following three lines of code (assume you have a file named siteservers.txt, with one server name per line):

$a = get-content .\siteservers.txt
$a | % {$b += $_ + ","}
$b.remove($b.length-1,1) | clip

The first line reads the file siteservers.txt in the current directory. For the second line, we create a new variable $b, and write each value from $a to it, followed by a comma. On the third line, we remove the last comma, and then pipe to clip.exe so that the results are copied to the clipboard.

View More Right-Click Community Extensions

Read About ConfigMgr R3 and Join the Beta

Greg Ramsey | DELL

ConfigMgr MVP | DellTechCenter | @ramseyg | greg_ramsey@dell.com

Are you still Deploying Windows XP To Older Dell Systems with ConfigMgr 2007 - Driver .CAB files (“Legacy Driver Packs”)

gramsey — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:32:50 GMT

My colleague Warren released the Legacy Desktop Driver Pack for XP today (we released the Notebook Driver Pack at MMS 2010). You can find all Dell Driver Packs on DellTechCenter.

The legacy packs are at the bottom of the page – download the compressed file, extract and be sure to read the Readme.txt before you import!

Here are the supported models for the XP Desktop and Notebook Driver Packs:

Dell IT Legacy Desktop Driver Pack for XP

Optiplex 740*
Optiplex 745
Optiplex 755**
Optiplex GX620
Optiplex GX520
Precision Workstation T3400**
Precision Workstation T5400**
Precision Workstation T7400**
Precision Workstation 390**
Precision Workstation 490**
Precision Workstation 690**

Dell IT Legacy Notebook Driver Pack for XP

Latitude D420
Latitude D620
Latitude D820
Latitude D430**
Latitude D630**
Latitude D830**
Precision Mobile Workstation M90
Precision Mobile Workstation M65
Precision Mobile Workstation M2300
Precision Mobile Workstation M4300
Precision Mobile Workstation M6300

Greg Ramsey | DELL

ConfigMgr MVP | DellTechCenter | @ramseyg | greg_ramsey@dell.com