All things SMS, System Center Configuration Manager, Active Directory, Group Policy, Virtualization, Security, Gadgets, Technology, and the Daily Thoughts of an SMS Engineer named Anthony Clendenen.

The Daily Ramblings of an SMS Engineer

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Why Patch Tuesday Turns Into Patch Thursday or Friday or Monday

October 09, 2007

I used to hate the second Tuesday of every month. I honestly liked it better when patches were released as they were ready. What happens with the scheduled updates is that everyone knows that it is coming and that means that everyone expects their SMS Engineers to have the patches deployed that night, no matter how late, no matter how many people, no matter what! And on Wednesday morning, usually around nine, everyone wants to know the status of the deployments. For me I had some advantages, one...  ... Read the full post or  the 3 comments. Filed under: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

WMI Stability Improvements Fix For Windows XP

June 26, 2007

Back in May Microsoft released the same type of fix for Windows 2003 and now it is ready for XP clients. SMS admins understand the pain of WMI corruption as well as anyone, and probably better than most. Getting permission denied errors when it has nothing to do with permissions, trying to diagnose client issues remotely when WMI is not reporting the correct or latest data, the painful memories return so quickly... With this update applied you should get better stability from WMI, integrated into...  ... Read the full post or  the 6 comments. Filed under: , , , ,

Error message in the WUSSyncXML.log file when the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates tries to synchronize and to download software updates: Error retrieving object PackageID

May 18, 2007

Error message in the WUSSyncXML.log file when the Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates tries to synchronize and to download software updates: "Error retrieving object PackageID" View products that this article applies to. Article ID:936906 Last Review:May 14, 2007 Revision:1.0 On This Page SYMPTOMS CAUSE RESOLUTION Method 1 Method 2 SYMPTOMS The Inventory Tool for Microsoft Updates (ITMU) is installed on a Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 site server. The SMS site server synchronizes...  ... Read the full post or  the first comment. Filed under: , ,

ITMU v2 No Longer Works

April 06, 2007

Late last year a flood of calls came into Microsoft Premier Support Services (PSS) regarding the SMS patch scan causing computers to lock up or freeze for a long period of time while the patches were installed. This problem got immediate attention by the product teams and a new version of ITMU was released to help resolve the issues being reported. The issues actually lie in the WUA agent that is installed on each computer not really with SMS itself, the problem was also complicated by the Wsusscan...  ... Read the full post or  the 3 comments. Filed under: , ,

MMS 2006 - Day 3 - SMSv4 (SCCM 2007) Beta 1 and Beta 1 Refresh Features

April 26, 2006

Presented by Josh Pointer and Michael Kelley IF YOU MISSED THIS SESSION MAKE SURE YOU ATTEND IT - THE SLIDES DO NOT DO IT JUSTICE YOU MUST SEE THE DEMOS!!! Included in Beta 1: (You may want to skip this section and get to the good stuff in Demo 1 below) Operating System Deployment (OSD) Software Updates Management (SUM) New UI Based on MMC 3.0 Filter Drag and Drop for patch and folders!!! Branch DP's What's new in the Beta 1 Refresh? - Matches Vista Beta 2 release time Deployment of Vista and Longhorn...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , , , , , ,

MMS 2006 - Day 3 - What's New in SMS 2003 R2?

April 26, 2006

Bryan Keller Program Manager SMS eXtreme Team and Quincy Milton Group Manager SMS eXtreme Team. What is it? New point release. Available for purchase if you are not an SA customer, if you are an SA customer then its free Built on SMS 2003 SP2 (SP2 is a pre-req) Available in Q2 - end of May or early June Enhancements: Deprecated AC support for Windows 200 SP3 Systems and XP RTM Added FQDN support AD Security Groups Discovery Multi threaded SWINV Integrated ITMU Features: Scan Tool for Vulnerability...  ... Read the full post or  be the first to comment. Filed under: , , , ,