Blogs

I’ve heard of mobile phones getting bricked, mostly iPhones when you jailbreak them but never heard of a laptop getting bricked. Well I have one right here, a Samsung Chronos 7, enabled UEFI and installed Windows 8, second time Windows 8 has gone on this...

Nice little write up from the official blog of the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager Product Group on Pull Distribution Points here http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2013/06/06/introducing-the-pull-distribution-points.aspx These...

From what I can see this has been around from SP1 beta bug as yet has not been fixed. The environment I’m testing with is Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 with MDT 2012 Update integration. When you come to generate a ‘Build and Capture’ task sequence you...

This is possibly one of best ‘minimum effort maximum gain’ jobs you can do in your Configuration Manager installation, it’s a real no-brainer. By integrating Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) with Configuration Manager you get the best of both worlds...

Steve Thompson MVP in ECM (ConfigMgr) just wrote up an excellent blog post on how to handle backups in ConfigMgr 2012. We really do advice that you stop using the ConfigMgr built-in Maintenance Task for backing up and switch over to SQL backups. Steve...

New update for the ConfigMgr 2012 Documentation Library for May 2013 is available here I usually wait for the offline update, I use it extensively since TechNet (Not the ConfigMgr Documentation team) broke their Online Documentation format by removing...

This explains how you can grant local site admins different rights to global applications and deployment using Role Based Access control – RBAC. Two sets of AD Groups are needed where one is used to grant the rights to create own deployment objects...

Here comes a new variant of one of my favourite scripts originally written by Joachim Meyer. Original: http://cid-dc43b6dbf64a5be0.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DC43B6DBF64A5BE0!113.entry This version creates a Update Group/List using the update status...

Kent’s a really high quality MVP and excellent trainer, and he’s at TechEd America in New Orleans blogging what he hears, really worth checking out his blog Some info on ConfigMgr 2012 R2 which we’ve not been allowed to talk about due to NDA, Kent’s taking...

Just starting to convert my WMI based Powershell scripts to Configuration Manager 2012 sp1 cmdlets when I stumbled on a issue with New-CMProgram, it only allows you to specify the package name and not PackageID like the WMI class SMS_Program will. ...

Finally, ConfigMgr 2012 admins can now do some testing with ConfigMgr 2012 SP1, intune and Windows 8 phone … without a certificate. This was a real blocker for testing as you needed to purchase a certificate from Symantec, but Microsoft have now released...

I can’t stop looking at this tool, it’s addictive. It is up on one of my screens all the time now. DNSQuerySniffer is a network sniffer utility that shows the DNS queries sent on your system. For every DNS query, the following information is displayed...

The Windows Management User Group has Wally Mead back for an awesome day of ConfigMgr SP1 and Mobile Device Management content. The venue is London, Victoria, Cardinal Place, and we have capacity for 100 attendees, and we have loads of giveaways to raffle...

In order to get the most out of your Microsoft System Center 2012 investment you'll no doubt want to get the Asset Intelligence features of Configuration Manager (SCCM) working. You can add your Microsoft Volume licensing statement into SCCM but what...

The Best of MMS UK registration is closed now and there will be an epic amount of folk there as well as partners. I’ll be attending so if you see me and want to say hi just pull me up, always happy to chat and meet. http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet...

Having passed this exam a number of different Microsoft exams myself, I thought some people may find it useful to get some feedback and guidance from someone who’s been there and done it. Now obviously I’m not going to give away any answers or suggest...

I fell foul of this problem this week where I had been installing a System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 site server. This was a new build Windows Server 2012 but as I began the installation a handy error message alerted me to the existence of...

I was at a customer site recently and they were simulating a data centre failure as part of their Disaster Recovery plan. They replicate the Site server as a VM across to another data centre in real-time and fail over to it when the main Site server is...

One of the great features of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 is the ‘Pull distribution point’. This allows you to specify certain distribution points (DP’s) in your Configuration Manager environment to pull content from others....

I’m running a session on Software Updates Management on the 23rd of May between 19:30 to 20:30 using LiveMeeting. This is an online event that does not require an invitation, just turn up on the scheduled date and time. Here’s the link the Events page...

The Hydration kit is a fantastic way of saving time when building your own test lab, but as I prefer to use my own lab domain I needed to make few changes. Hydration Kit for ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 can be downloaded from here: http://www.deploymentresearch...

So, Tech.Days UK starts tomorrow and runs through until the end of Friday, and it is all available online. Take a look at the session schedule here, https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032543696&Culture=en-GB&community...

Hi All, This week sees the start of a new MVP Speaker Series covering Windows Server and System Center technologies. Many of the presentations will be sessions that couldn't be accommodated at MMS, and others will be brand new, but they will all...

The SCCM 2007 HealthCheck Toolkit was initially developed by dotNetwork. dotNetwork was the brand used by Raphael Perez, MVP in Enterprise Client Management, to perform consultancy and training. During 2012, dotNetwork was taken down and re-branded to...

I wrote a little article for TechNet UK as a guest post where I go over the new Email Notifications mechanism in ConfigMgr 2012 SP1. Check it out here