One of the most requested windows7 customization in every deployment projects is the OS branding. Here is a quick step by step guide. Windows Background Picture: If you want to assign a Win7 Background & Logon picture based on the size of the...

I have been asked a number of times now how we embed links to SkyDrive hosted files in our blogs. In this Off Topic post I'll cover how you can setup a SkyDrive folder and embed links as we do or send URLs to the files in emails. This would be great if...

In this second blog entry on VDI I will explain the benefits that using Citrix Xendesktop as the connection broker can bring. As explained in the first blog Microsoft does not provide a broker but partners with companies including Citrix, Quest and several...

So you may have seen a couple of blogs about an undocumented feature in Windows 7. This feature allows you to create a folder which then gives access to a large number of shortcuts. The feature has been christened “GodMode” by many bloggers – and I should...

Update 2009-07-17: Corrected some errors in the application settings in the Extracting the Sysprep Files section that occured because I did not make all necessary changes after doing a copy/paste. Update 2009-12-29: Added MDT 2010 version of ZTIBackupCustom...

There are many new features of MDT 2012 but one that I particularly like is the ability to apply GPO Packs created using Security Compliance Manager ( SCM ) during the deployment process. SCM is a great tool that allows you to create and manage group...

I have been doing some sizing work for a customer around System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (ConfigMgr) and its use specifically for deployment (Windows Vista)– there seems to be some conflicting info in many different places – however...

"The Deployment Guys" is a blog focused on deployment. "The Deployment Guys" is a combined effort.   There many different blogs out there with useful deployment information. This is great but it can be difficult to keep track...

Michael Murgolo did a great post on the different ways to adjust default settings when building an image ( Configuring default settings for Windows image deployment ) and one of the options presented was to targeted changes to the Default User Registry...

The initialization or INI file format has been around a long time. In early versions of Windows (especially Windows 3.x) INI files were used to store most Windows and application configuration information. Even though the Windows Registry, XML files,...

When creating a Windows 8 Image for the Enterprise you may not want to include all of the default Windows Store Applications. These applications are easy enough to remove by right clicking on the app tile in the Start Screen, but as you most likely know...

In this post I will be showing you how to use ospprearm.exe as part of a MDT Task Sequence to rearm Office 2010 Volume Activation in Windows 7 and Office 2010 uses Key Management Service (KMS) or Multiple Activation Keys (MAK). In an enterprise environment...

edit: fixed error in command line example. Thanks to Aurélien Bonnin and FoW for pointing it out. edit 2 : this version has been updated, please search the blog for the latest version. When creating and configuring an LTI deployment solution...

Often times, after creating an MDT or SCCM task sequence, you need to document it for yourself or your customers. Usually, this involves creating a table with the groups and steps, extracting their descriptions, identifying conditions and denoting the...

The DevCon utility acts as a command-line version of Device Manager. Using DevCon, you can enable, disable, restart, update, remove, and query individual devices or groups of devices.  However, because this utility is not part of the operating system...

Here is a common scenario. You are deploying an operating system using MDT Lite Touch, during the deployment you install some user specific applications. However the users think that the deployment is completed an they close the application installs or...

Here is a simple tip that I thought I'd share in the hope that you don't need to lose a few hours of your life trying to work out what is wrong with your SCCM client sotware install! I was onsite with a client recently trying to upgrade some Windows...

03 August 2008 - Important Update The content in this post is obsolete. Please see my new August 3rd post for a complete update. I will leave this post up for a while for people who are still using the old scripts. However, I will be deleting the...

Two more tips for the blog. Actually, one is a tip and the other is the solution to a common problem I see! During the execution of a task sequence in MDT (normally while creating an image, or deploying one) the computer will display the Installation...

In this first post of a series I am going to talk about VDI. The first post, will describe what VDI is, why you may use VDI, describe the architecture and provide a guide for a test environment.  This blog entry is less technically deep than the...

Adding 802.1x functionality to WinPE has been a hot topic for a while now. And, given the amount of traffic and comments that my earlier post generated when I linked to the newly released updates for WinPE that add this long awaited support, it seems...

One of the more difficult scenarios that customers have found in the past is multi-booting a new OS. The effort needed to re-partition the drive to allow for the new OS is sometimes too great. One new solution that is gaining ground in deployment is Boot...

So as Windows 7 accelerates to being released to manufacture and we start to get involved in engagements to deploy it I thought I might take a quick look at some changes to BitLocker and how they might help or hinder deployments. One thing that customers...

Have you ever wanted to pause the task sequence in MDT 2008 or ConfigMgr 2007 for a few seconds while something catches up...? I had a requirement to do this recently where I ran a task to close and cancel the Windows Sidebar at the start of the State...

Take a look at the image below, which is a fairly common scenario for a company; let's call them Contoso. Contoso has multiple offices around the country that all connected to their head office, some with high-speed network connections and others with...