ConfigMgrFu

Presentation From Today

2011-10-07T21:13:00Z

Here’s my presentation from today’s System Center Virtual User Group . 75%+ was actually a live demo of the new application distribution and management capabilities so these slides are just highlights and for your review – note that I ganked some content from Michael Niehaus’s presentation at Tech Australia 2011. The recording should be up tomorrow; I’ll post a link when I get it. Another interesting presentation today was by Duane Bourgeois from Microsoft on the unified System Center 2012 installer...(read more)

New Direction

2011-09-30T03:00:51Z

After four great years with Catapult Systems, I’ve decided to make a move away from consulting. Catapult was and is a great place to work and this move in no way reflects my displeasure with Catapult; Catapult is and will remain a top notch consulting organization ready to meet the needs of its customers. It took a special opportunity to pull me away: I was presented with an offer I could not refuse that in my opinion is in the best interests of my family and my career. I will continue to contribute...(read more)

Inside Central 8 - ConfigMgr has Pete on the run

2011-09-23T19:51:07Z

Here’s a link to recent podcast I did on various topics including ConfigMgr 2012 (of course). http://systemcenterpodcast.libsyn.com/inside-central-8-config-mgr-has-pete-on-the-run?sf2214975=1...(read more)

ConfigMgr Client Hotfix Versioning

2011-09-16T18:09:25Z

Time to finally transfer my notes from two big yellow stickies to a blog post. Basically, while trying to do a build & capture of Windows 7 SP1 recently, I was trying to apply every available (to my knowledge) client hotfix to the ConfigMgr agent. I was using Michael Murgolo’s hotfix script to automatically populate the PATCH property, but was running into all kinds of issues and so dug in to figure out what was going wrong. Note that the issues outlines below are not just present in task sequences...(read more)

Mobile Device Management in ConfigMgr 2012

2011-09-09T17:42:43Z

Mobile Device Management is a very popular topic in enterprises as of late and so the question of what (exactly) ConfigMgr 2012 will be able to manage has been coming up a lot lately also. (Note that this information is current to the best of my knowledge for beta 2 of ConfigMgr 2012 and presumably for RTM.) Basically, there are two types of client management in ConfigMgr 2012: light and native (these aren’t official names just my characterizations). Native Native client management means that a ConfigMgr...(read more)

Talk TechNet Replay

2011-09-01T03:55:03Z

Here’s a link to the replay for my recent appearance on Talk TechNet: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032490798&role=attend&pw=4F839DB8 . We discussed a lot things including private clouds, System Center, Elmo, and of course Configuration Manager 2012....(read more)

Two OSD Application Install Issues

2011-09-01T03:47:46Z

Here’s a quick synopsis of two issues I had at my recent customer installing some “packaged” applications during OSD. The first was error code 0x80042000 from an InstallShield installation package. This is neither a standard Windows error code or a custom ConfigMgr error code. After some web searches, I stumbled on a blog post by fellow MVP and friend Kenny Buntinx . The symptoms lined up so we gave the solution a shot by adding the /f2 option to the command-line to create a log file. And amazingly...(read more)

Talk TechNet

2011-08-22T17:29:22Z

My second appearance on Microsoft’s Talk TechNet is this Wednesday at 9AM Pacific time. Sign up for Episode 53 and have some questions ready. And in case Johan forgot from last time, I’m just shy of 2m tall, really about 198cm....(read more)

ConfigMgr Application Package Recipes – Adobe Reader X

2011-07-15T17:14:29Z

So was Adobe sucking up to Apple when they decided to use the roman numeral for the version number? Anyway, here’s another common package recipe that I see folks struggling with all the time. <Annoyance>There is no such thing as Acrobat Reader. It has been called Adobe Reader for about 10 years now.</Annoyance> Request Distribution Rights From Adobe Yes, you must legally do this to distribute Adobe Reader in your enterprise/organization. It’s a simple form to fill out and you’ll get an...(read more)

OSD and RunOnce

2011-06-25T14:48:53Z

I recently stumbled onto a somewhat major issue during OSD that is the result of a fundamental (bad) assumption made by many including Windows itself and Internet Explorer. That assumption is that at some point during the deployment of Windows (Windows 7 in this case), an Administrator will log on to the system. This may be during the actual deployment process or maybe right after it is done. Why is this assumption important? Because both Windows setup and Internet Explorer put items in the Windows...(read more)

Installing Fonts During OSD

2011-06-23T18:38:29Z

Here’s a simple little script to install fonts during OSD. Note that this is an example of not doing any manual work during OSD: manual work is un-IT. A quick web search, using Bing of course ( Hey, Scripting Guy! How Can I Install Fonts Using a Script- - Hey ), and a little scripting knowledge resulted in this VBScript. Const FONTS = &H14& Set shell = CreateObject("Shell.Application") Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") Set fontsFolder = shell.Namespace...(read more)

TechEd Sessions on Channel 9

2011-05-21T20:09:18Z

All (or at least most) of the TechEd North America 2011 sessions are online at Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011?sort=rating&direction=asc#tab_sortBy_rating . A quick filter gives you all the Identity and Management sessions: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011?sort=rating&direction=asc&term=&t=identity%2B-and-%2Bmanagement . My session is listed in there also: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2011/SIM407 ....(read more)

Boot Image Backgrounds From TechEd

2011-05-16T14:54:51Z

For those interested, curious, or mischievous, here are the three boot image backgrounds I used during our (Johan’s and my) pre-conference session yesterday....(read more)

What’s in a Heartbeat

2011-04-29T20:31:37Z

Questions often come on the forums about Heartbeat Discovery including how often should they be configured to run or indirectly, what updates certain resource information in ConfigMgr like the IP Address. The answer to the first question depends on what you are going to use the data for that is contained in a Heartbeat Discovery? But if you don’t know what’s in a Heartbeat Discovery message, it’s very difficult to answer that question. So, here’s exactly what gets included in the Data Discovery Record...(read more)

Accessing OSD Troubleshooting Tools

2011-04-16T13:59:31Z

About the only method for troubleshooting issues in OSD is to drop to a command-prompt (by pressing F8) and then running whatever tool you need; e.g., Trace32. The only real problem with this method is making whatever tools you need available to you. This is typically done by adding the tools directly to the boot image. MDT makes this much easier for you in the MDT Boot Image creation wizard (shown at the right) and the method outlined Michael Petersen makes this easier for standard boot images....(read more)