WMUG

Customer asked me to hobble together a solution, that would allow them to VNC into a WINPE session as soon as WINPE has finished starting up, and before the ConfigMgr pre-execution hook kicked in. Someone still needs to boot WINPE and look for the IP, but once the IP lease is issued, it’ll be reused by the VM if WINPE is rebooted, making a reconnection reasonably reliable. If you try this approach using ConfigMgr’s...

I’m extremely pleased and happy to be able to announce that today (1st June 2018) I received an email to tell me that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in Enterprise Mobility for 2018-2019. To say I am pleased is an understatement and naturally I have a list of thank yous for people who have helped me to achieve this. First and foremost my family – My wonderful (and patient) wife Anna...

We have a new tracing tool in town, OneTrace, which comes in the latest Technical Preview Build 1804 . You’ll also find the Log Viewer that comes with Support Center: Above its opened several logs and merged them together as default behaviour. For CMTrace users, highlighting is located in Advanced Filters > Add > Highlight, a few extra clicks than before, but doable, especially what with the flexibility...

One of my customers is currently waiting for the results to come back, from a deployment of a Configuration Baseline which was pushed out to detect the Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser DLL problem. The problem itself can cause chaos on the networks, due to excessive WSUS communications, and should be read up on here. The problem seems to be due to specific versions of the Compatibility Appraiser, which version...

I did a demonstration of Windows AutoPilot at the Global Azure Bootcamp in Birmingham last Saturday 21st April, my demo failed so I had to flip to a pre-recorded demonstration. I also mentioned that I’d been having some issues the previous week when preparing for the demo and if I found out the cause I would share it. Well, here it is. I found out today that there have been some changes to AutoPilot requirements and if...

Managed to get a new version of PatchMaster ready for shipping, as version 1.4. You can download it here on TechNet Gallery . This one has several enhancements, that should make it more universally adoptable. I realise that it will be nigh-on-difficult, to make PatchMaster an all-singing-all-dancing highly configurable tool that’ll meet everyone’s requirements; But I can get PatchMaster to meet most requirements...

Finally have the time to sit down and work out a guide to explain what PatchMaster is, and why you want it to do what it does. PatchMaster automates the entire SUM experience. With a one time configuration, each Patch Cycle can be initiated with full automation end-to-end, from searching for patches, to downloading and deploying them. If you are use to rolling your own each month, burning time on the task, this...

Currently working for a customer who is transitioning their Patch workload from WSUS Standalone to ConfigMgr, and I’ve introduced PatchMaster to automate the middle part, the actual monthly work, leaving them to keep an eye on Reporting, and reacting to Out of Cycle patches if needs be. They asked me for a unique scenario: Security and Critical Updates must induce a controlled reboot (count down, UI experience)...

In this series: Intune Standalone–Part 1 In Part 1 of this series, I enrolled a device that in an post-OOBE state, had it in workgroup mode and finished the setup. Here’s a brief run through on what it looks like to manually enrol a device that is sitting at the first prompt of Windows OOBE [ 2 ]. I’m enrolling a Windows 10 Build 1709 Operating System, with unmodified media. We will at some point in the series...

A new build release has arrived for System Center Configuration Manager Current Branch, Build 1802. Just look at the crazy treasure in this release, some of which was coded from ideas and work done at the SCCM MVP Hackathon, that took place in Seattle last November and which I attended. Was a amazing experience working so closely with the product group, to realise some of the stuff that landed in this release, there...

Welcome to my guides on using Intune Standalone and ConfigMgr, to service Windows 10 devices. They will be aimed towards initiates, basically anyone that hasn’t yet dug their spurs into Intune and Azure. Intune and Azure are an ever shifting landscape, so if you are visiting, the guide was written in March 2018 and some options or call outs may have been renamed or deprecated. The scope of these guides will be limited...

As the author I can see that PatchMaster wasn’t ‘there’ yet, worked, but needed much more coding loving before it could become a universally usable tool. Version 1.1 worked well enough, but much of the Deployment Properties were defaulted and unavailable. Version 1.2 nails this down with full deployment property control. And I took it a bit further, which took a few days of keyboard hammering, but now you can define...

I previously wrote a short post and did a demonstration video of the Run Scripts feature in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager - https://morethanpatches.com/2018/02/12/sccm-run-scripts-pre-release-feature/ In that demo I used an example script created by Jörgen Nilsson which ran on the client, zipped up the SCCM log files folder and copied to back to a central file share. After some further testing with a...

Released V1.1 last night, while I was ‘adjusting’ back to UK time from Seattle time, I fixed up the problem causing V1.0 to become a Tech Demo with no fangs. I let it run overnight, and all my minions are lined up for Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10: We even have special Software Update Groups that you will use for product reporting per month, a rollup of a patches classifications per product: Staggered deployments...

So each month I try to cover what’s new in the tech preview version of Configuration Manager. This month however, was a little different. Microsoft dropped the proverbial bomb of Tech Preview 1802 in mid-Feb and it was a big one, no fewer than 21 new features to cover off and a combination of life and work kind of got in the way this month for me. I hit the upgrade button on the day and this is probably the first time...

Rushing to get things ready for the week ahead at the MVP 2018 Summit, my main bit of fun was dragging its heels to get out the door, PatchMaster, but its done now, wrapped in an MSI and out the door. Whether its forgotten a shoe or a sock, who knows, well you will actually, if you install and give it a try and something exciting happens. Many nights of coding, time I could have spent chillaxing in World of Tanks...

This weekend I’m going to sit down and write about one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in my long career with SCCM\ConfigMgr. I was truly privileged to be invited to attend the Microsoft campus in Redmond for a week out of cycle from the normal MVP Summits this past November. Much happened that weekend to make a really good post, giving some insights into the Product Group, the SCCM\ConfigMgr Product, Microsoft...

This is so awesome. I’ve been selected to present at MMS this year. I’ll be putting on the following session with my esteemed peer Wally Mead, and will present in one or more others. Here’s my session details, if you attend and fancy it, would love to see you there. Architecting ConfigMgr Description: Come and enjoy a guided tour through the latest Microsoft products available to ConfigMgr Infrastructure architects...

As I’ve been having a play around with this recently and implementing with some customers I thought it was only right that I put a little time in and share the experience. I decided to go one further than a blog post and record a quick demo of ...

For those who attended the recent WMUG Manchester event or for those that wanted to but didn’t, I have now rounded up the wild horses and gathered the content in one place to share with you. As a quick reminder the sessions (in order) were: Welcome and Intro Let's get flying with Windows AutoPilot - Peter Egerton (WMUG Leader) We take a look at what's currently capable with Windows AutoPilot and what we should...

Avid #SCCM and #ConfigMgr hash tag followers will have noticed that Microsoft just released Configuration Manager Technical Preview 1801. If you haven’t already installed this it will be available within your existing tech preview console in updates and servicing or you can download a clean version to install from new here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-configuration-manager-and-endpoint...

Jogging along at a good rate here. Moved off of the UI and collecting Patches to building out the ConfigMgr objects. Some simple rules to define Windows 10 and Office: Yields the following Software Update Groups, with the total patches in each: And here they are in the ConfigMgr Console: The Software Update Packages and Deployments are next, lots of fiddly coding ahead. The Software Update Packages (SUP...

Pretty much rounding off the UI logic after major coding underneath. Rule system is pretty much done now: Deployments can be assigned to individual Device Group members, get’s complicated, but you can carve out as many server (or client) deployments as you want (so as to stagger\stage): If you use RBA to split off admin and read access to SUGs then the Security Scopes feature will let you go crazy with permissions...

Recently I submitted a UserVoice entry to tweak behaviour on the Save-CMSoftwareUpdate Applet, glad to say it was actioned very quickly (Adam you rock!). The changes do not yet show up in the Applet Documentation Library, but as described below, two new parameters have been added: RetryCount RetryDelaySec Here’s the UserVoice submission : As I said above, as of the time of writing the documentation has...

In 2017 two customers at roughly the same time asked me to ‘fully automate SUM’, both requests were driven by the low skill level of inbound SUM admins, the intent was to reduce the work surface for these admins, basically take out much of the SUM activity at each Patch Tuesday so that they could focus on troubleshooting to soak up issue clients. Before then I was never asked to trick-out SUM, simply stand it up against...