WMUG

Today we saw a shock announcement, Wally Mead, Mr SMS / ConfigMgr himself is leaving Microsoft. The legend and MVP lead for the Enterprise Client Management MVPs is joining Cireson as Principal Program Manager. If you missed the announcement We have all seen him talk at various conferences, user group meetings, webcasts, the list goes on… famous for his preference for notepad rather than smstrace. And now he is leaving...

I have been working with OpsMgr 2012 recently, and came across the following error when trying to use the OpsMgr web console Server Error in '/OperationsManager' Application The Windows application event log pretty much summed it up Source ASP.NET 4.0.30319.0 ‏ Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken...

WMUG has done it again! We're very proud to announce that Wally Mead is coming back to the UK, and to WMUG on the 10th of November 2012, to present across a day on System Center 2012 Configuration Manager RTM and mostly SP1. Wally is one of the most authoritative sources of information for the product, and with his usual fast tempo and sharp wit will be taking us on a journey through the RTM and SP1 feature...

I had a client ask me if it was possible to ‘make’ ConfigMgr 2012 send an email when a workstation has finished building. They are using ConfigMgr 2012 to deploy their build. I have done this before using a VB script, but thought I would try and do it using PowerShell. There are two parts to this, first identifying a way to see that the OS deployment has completed (and being able to run an action...

I was working with a client who wanted to use Group Policy to install the ConfigMgr client. They had created the Group Policy with the client installation settings and had CCMSETUP.MSI as an Assigned Application. Unfortunately the client was not getting installed. A quick look in the event log on the workstation that this group policy was being tested on showed the %%1274 error. I have seen this before, it is to do with...

With the release of Windows Server 2012 to TechNet and MSDN I started the job of rebuilding my home lab (Hyper-V) and my demo setup on my laptop (Windows 7 and VMware Workstation) Server 2012 installed fine on VMware until I installed the VMware tools, after that the server would not boot and when it did the screen was just black. After looking at the settings I came across this one Accelerate 3D graphics Select this...

Normally I use MDT to perform the build and capture task. I thought I would try ConfigMgr 2012 to build and capture Windows 8 Consumer Preview Build 8250. I created a simple task sequence which comprised of the following steps Restart in Windows PE Partition the Disk Apply Operating System Apply Windows Settings Setup Windows and ConfigMgr Prepare ConfigMgr Client for Capture Prepare OS Capture the Reference Machine Every...

You are running ConfigMgr 2012 RTM and SQL 2008 R2. You navigate to the Reports Node and right click, selecting ‘Create Report’ You receive the following error This is because you have installed SQL 2008 R2 which ships with Report Builder 3.0…..By default ConfigMgr 2012 uses Report Builder 2.0 After digging around in the registry I found that modifying the following registry key allows ConfigMgr 2012 to invoke Report...

One of the problems I often encounter when implementing patch management solutions for clients is they often require different settings on clients that are managed by the same primary site server. Recently I was asked to hide all the software update deployments on workstations but make all software update deployments visible on servers. After have a long hard think and looking in the ConfigMgr SDK I found the SetUserExperienceFlag...

I was setting up patch management for a client recently using ConfigMgr 2007 SP2 with R3 and WSUS. Everything was working fine apart from their DPM server was not returning a status of compliant. After reviewing the client side windows update agent log file %windir%\windowsupdate.log I noticed the following SyncUpdates failure, error = 0x8024400E, soap client error = 7, soap error code = 400, HTTP status code = 200 and...

Recently I upgraded my ConfigMgr hierarchy to R3 – went very smoothly….so I thought anyway. Later on I tried to create a reporting services report on my central site server and received the following error in the admin console GUI System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: The given key was not present in the dictionary.    at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowKeyNotFoundException()    at System.Collections...

I had a rather anxious phone call from a DBA friend today He had a production SQL 2008 server running in Window Authentication mode, someone had removed the main admin login. He was getting quite upset as he could not see any possible way to add it back in again, this account was the only account with admin privileges. I knew that local system had admin rights on the server so decided to try and use this as my...

I had a phone call from a friend today, he could not get an advertisement to run. He emailed me over the execmgr.log, this is what I could see Creating mandatory request for advert AA120134, program Installation, package AA120234 execmgr 21/1/2011 1:27:23 PM 1064 (0x0428) Download content and mapped drive required. AA120134 - Installation not acceptable by client execmgr 21/1/2011 1:27:23 PM 2468 (0x09A4) RaisePolicyStateStatusMessage...

When installing and configuring WebDAV, WebDAV may not configure correctly This means that clients cannot install using 'Client Push Installation' below is the fix 1. Open %windir%\system32\inetserv\config\applicationhost.config in notepad 2. Between the entries <add name=”optionsverbhandler…> and <add name=”staticfile…> add the following line <add name="WebDAV" path="*" verb...

If you bought the prestige edition of COD Black Ops , you will get a free Woods Outfit for your Avatar. There has been lots of questions about how to put this outfit on. The answer is very simple. Go to the avatar section under the 'suits' it will be available in there.

O’Reilly have a sale on, you could save up to 50% Follow the link to see the 50% deal

Consider the following System Center Configuration Manager 2007 scenario: 1. You create a query based collection. 2. You update and refresh that collection and it works correctly. 3. You go to the properties of that collection and edit the query it uses so that it should display different machines. 4. You update and refresh the collection. After doing this the machines in the collection may still reflect the original...

The Microsoft® Configuration Manager team is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for participation in the Configuration Manager v.Next Community Evaluation Program (CEP). The goal of this program is to provide early adopters a streamlined approach to evaluating Configuration Manager v.Next. For customer and partners who want to efficiently manage implementation, test scenarios, discover and contribute...

Found this great article today written by the Configuration Manager Support Team. When building a Windows Vista or newer reference image (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2), to create a custom Default User profile based on modifications done on the local Administrator profile normally the CopyProfile option is used in an Unattend.xml file. However, since System Center Configuration Manager 2007 creates...

If any of you are thinking about utilising dashboards for ConfigMgr then read on. There is a new TechNet Virtual Lab: Installing and Configuring the System Center Configuration Manager Dashboard After completing this lab, you will be better able to install and configure System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Dashboard, create and Customize Data sets, and control access and configure Data Displays in System Center Configuration...

NEWS Changes to Microsoft's software pricing and licensing could have a big impact on IT departments. This is according to analysts at Forrester Research, who have identified five changes that could affect CIOs who are planning new purchases or simply trying to comply with their existing contracts rest of the article

Citrix® XenApp™ 6 introduces integration with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 giving organizations a single, integrated view and management of all applications across the enterprise including on-demand apps by XenApp. The Citrix XenApp Connector leverages the Configuration Manager console to deploy and publish applications and updates to XenApp servers with zero disruption to users and extends the...

Extract from Mark Russinovich’s blog On November 3 2009, Sysinternals retired NewSID , a utility that changes a computers machine Security Identifier (machine SID). I wrote NewSID in 1997 (its original name was NTSID) because the only tool available at the time for changing machine SIDs was the Microsoft Sysprep tool, and Sysprep doesn’t support changing the SIDs of computers that have applications installed….. read the...

I was asked a question today about using custom variables (collection variables) with the unattended.xml. As an example I have used the section of an unattended.xml I use for InputLocale, SystemLocale, UILanguage and UserLocale InputLocale -    Keyboard layout and system input locale SystemLocale - Default language for Windows Setup UserLocale -     Locale to use for dates, times, currency...

Brief Description The Windows 7 Deployment Plan is a high-level checklist of milestones and tasks, with examples of deliverables, for each part of the Windows 7 deployment process. Overview The Windows 7 Deployment Plan can be used as a broad checklist or as the overall reference document for each part of the deployment process. For each segment of the process, the Deployment Plan presents the steps as identified in the...