IntroductionImportant: This feature is only available in the technical preview for now.Most SCCM customers are trying to limit the number of servers they need for the SCCM environment. And for many good reasons. Having a server, on each remote office to support clients can be very expensive for some customers.Most of the workloads can be provided by other desktop clients by making them distribution points or enabling services like BranchCache or Peer Cache. But one important function that required a full server Operating Systems is the option to provide PXE boot.So, If you have been doing OS deployment using SCCM…
Browsing: OSD
Today I got a call from a customer that was playing around with OSD in System Center Configuration Manager and the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). He wanted to know where he could find a list of all the Time Zones Names, so he could change the default “Pacific Standard Time” to something else. But where can you find a list of all the “TimeZoneName”?Instead of using some old reference list on TechNet or MSDN, you can simply use the good old Time Zone Utility (Tzutil), that can be used to view and manage available time zones.You can run Tzutil from…
Last week I got a call from a customer, that wanted to automate the naming of new computers, that was beeing deployed using System Center Configuration Manager. They were using the build-in UDI Wizard, that comes with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). But the default computer name for new computers are “MININT-%SomeRandomNumber%”. They want to use the following naming standard: The first 3 characters should be static (The company prefix). In this example well use “ABC”. The next character should be the Device type (D=Desktop, L=Laptop or V=Virtual Machine). The last (up to) 9 characters should be the computer’s serial…
This morning, one of my customers called me and told me that they bought some new Lenovo laptops (Lenovo ThinkPad S540), but they was unable start OS Deployment using SCCM/PXE. Normally when I see this behaivor, it’s caused by a missing driver in the boot image, so I told them to verify that the driver was loaded correct. Here is a guide to verify the network driver in a SCCM Boot Image: https://www.ronnipedersen.com/2009/04/importing-network-drivers-into-the-windows-pe-boot-image/ But the driver was loaded correct, so I requested the SMSTS.log and found another common issue. The SMSTS.log file can be found here: https://www.ronnipedersen.com/2014/08/sccm-2012-r2-smsts-log-located/ In the SMSTS.log…
OS Deployment and patch management has always been big challenge for many admins around the world. Not just the testing, but also to get the customer image patched made many ConfigMgr admins a lot older . One of the new features in ConfigMgr 2012 allows you to apply updates to an OS image that’s been imported to the ConfigMgr 2012 library. This feature only supports “Component Based Servicing” (CBS) updates, and can be applied to Windows Vista and above. To use this feature, navigate to Software Library -> Overview -> Operating Systems – Operating System Images, select the Image that…
When troubleshooting OS Deployment in System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, I really miss the state messages from the advertisement status in ConfigMgr 2007. You can find the same information in reports, but for this scenario, I really prefer the Status Messages. This guide will help you create a Status Message Query for a Specific Deployment ID. First you need to get the deployment ID of the Task Sequence you wish to monitor. Monitoring -> Overview -> Deployments. (The Deployment ID are not displayed by default). Navigate to the Status Message Queries: Monitoring -> Overview -> System Status -> Status Message…
New features include support for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012, an improved Lite Touch user experience, and more! Visit the MDT home page and subscribe to the news feed to be notified when he beta is available for download (releasing in early June). Source: Microsoft Solution Accelerators May Newsletter!
When running certain applications and commands through the “Run Command Line” task sequence in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 for a 64-bit Operating System you might find that the task will fail. This is true for applications that don’t fully support 64-bit mode. Some commands are not available by default when running in 32-bit mode, for example “manage-bde.exe” or “winsat.exe. To work around this issue, simply disable the “64-bit file system redirection” in the task sequence when running such applications or commands.
If you wish to deploy Windows 7 32-bit using Configuration Manager, and you need to enable AERO during deployment, you needs to add a “Run Command Line” step to the Task Sequence with the following command: WinSAT.exe formal If you do the same while deploying Windows 7 64-bit, the step will fail. The is due to the File System Redirector, and the fact that the Tack Sequence is running in 32-bit context. To workaround this minor issue, make sure that you select Disable 64-bit file system redirection, on this step.
By default, the "Enable BitLocker" task of a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Task Sequence defaults to an encryption method and cipher strength of "AES 128-bit with Diffuser". However, the "Enable BitLocker" task does not have any way of changing from the default encryption method and cipher strength to any of the other options: AES 256-bit with Diffuser AES 128-bit AES 256-bit Normally the BitLocker encryption method and cipher strength is controlled by Group Policy. This policy can be found in the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) under the following node: Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> BitLocker…