Some of you may have noticed that when you open up the Configuration Manager console, and view the default collections, that there isn't an All Windows Vista Systems collection there. There are some valid reasons for it not being there, but that's a different issue.
This post will help you create an All Windows Vista Systems collection the easy way.
There are a couple of ways to do this, but the easiest is to just copy the WQL query language from an existing collection. This is also how to easily recreate some of those collections that contain complex WQL queries when you only want to change one or two of the values.
For information on how to create collections using the "normal" method, see:
How to Create a Collection
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb694291.aspx
To get the party started, you need a WQL query from an existing collection based on an operating system value.
Note: To get to the collections node in the Configuration Manager console, navigate to System Center Configuration Manager / Site Database / Computer Management.
To get a collection WQL query based on an operating system value the easy way:
- Right-click an existing collection based on operating system value and click Properties. For this example, I'm using the All Windows 2000 Systems collection.
- With the Membership Rules Tab selected, click the Properties icon
- Click Edit Query Statement...
- Click Show Query Language and copy the WQL query into notepad
- Cancel out of the collection properties without saving any changes.
With the trusty query now temporarily saved in notepad, you're ready to create the new collection for Vista systems:
- Right-click Collections and click New Collection.
- On the General Page of the New Collection Wizard, specify a name for the collection. For this example I'm using All Windows Vista Systems. You can name it whatever you want, but remember that collection names must be unique.
- On the Membership Rules Page, you'll need to create a query to catch all of the Vista computers discovered:
- Click the new query icon
- Give it a cool name like All Windows Vista Systems or something
- Click Edit Query Statement...
- Click Show Query Language and copy the WQL query from notepad into it
- Change the operating system version (at the end of the query) from 5.0 to 6.0
- Click OK
- Click OK
- Click Next, Next, Next, Close.
Right-click, the new collection name and click Update Collection Membership, and OK on the collection update dialog box.
Viola! The Vista computers should appear-as long as you have some 