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You would expect that having Microsoft in the Seattle area would result in having a plethora of Microsoft-related users groups around.  But over the years, I’ve found that these are somewhat hard to find.  So here’s my compilation: Seattle IT Pro User's Group .  This group talks about...

Apparently I was so wrapped up in the MDT 2012 Update 1 development process that I forgot to talk about one of the areas that consumed weeks of my time before the MDT 2012 Update 1 release: improvements to the “Roles and Features” logic. In MDT 2010 and MDT 2012, we had a task sequence action to “Install...

Traveling from New Zealand to Australia for the TechEd Australia conference, I had some additional time to work on the troubleshooting guide, which is now starting to feel more like a book. I added two sections to this document, one reviewing all the possible return codes from the MDT scripts (yes, there...

I’ve been doing a session at various events over the years called “Troubleshooting Windows Deployments” or something similar to that. Today is the latest, presenting the session at TechEd New Zealand in Auckland. It’s been tweaked some over the years, but the basic flow has always...

As part of the MDT installation process, you need to run the “Configure ConfgMgr Integration” wizard to add the MDT components into the ConfigMgr console and database. But what if you want to automate that process? Fortunately, that’s pretty easy to do using PowerShell, as the integration...

Here’s a quick suggestion for speeding up MDT-created task sequences in ConfigMgr 2007 or ConfigMgr 2012: Find your MDT toolkit files package source folder. In the “Scripts” folder inside that folder, find the “ZTISCCM.wsf” script. Look for a line like this: wscript.sleep 30000 Remove that line or comment...

You probably noticed that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 RTM’d today (see http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2012/08/01/windows-8-has-reached-the-rtm-milestone.aspx and http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/08/01/windows-server-2012-released-to-manufacturing...

One of the challenges with previous versions of the UDI wizard was extensibility.  With MDT 2010 Update 1, there was no way to add a new page.  With MDT 2012, you could do this by writing C++ and C# code, which at least made it doable, but beyond the capabilities of most organizations. ...

Another new feature in MDT 2012 Update 1 is the ability to call System Center 2012 Orchestrator runbooks from within a task sequence.  This works with Lite Touch deployments, ConfigMgr 2007, and ConfigMgr 2012.  Using this capability, you can tie external processes into your task sequences...

In MDT 2012, we added support for DaRT integration into an MDT Lite Touch boot image, as well as a new monitoring feature that integrated with DaRT to make remote control into Windows PE easy.  See http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2011/11/28/mdt-2012-new-feature-dart-integration.aspx...

Since we released MDT 2012 Update 1 Beta 1 a few weeks ago, I’ve received a few panicked e-mail messages from people asking “what happened to the UDI task sequence, it’s gone.”  Don’t worry, it’s still there.  What we have done in MDT 2012 Update 1 is merge the ZTI and UDI task sequence together...

In MDT 2012 RTW that released back in April, we included support for DaRT 7, making it easy to add the DaRT components to Lite Touch boot images.  See http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2011/11/28/mdt-2012-new-feature-dart-integration.aspx for more details on that. With MDT 2012 Update...

The MDT 2012 Update 1 release is primarily intended to add support for deploying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.  For ConfigMgr 2012, it’s the SP1 release that adds similar support.  So if you want to start testing out the Windows 8 deployment process, you’ll want to be using MDT 2012 Update...

Now that Configuration Manager 2012 RTM is available, people will certainly start installing it, both in their labs and in production – and will start finding out that the SQL version check in the ConfigMgr installer is looking for some very specific SQL maintenance levels.  (I’ve pulled out plenty...

I’ve done a few sessions now where I demonstrated how to put some hooks into a task sequence so that you can single step through the process and “poke around” to see exactly what is going on. Since I’ve promised to make those scripts available, and will get lots of e-mails from...

Now that Configuration Manager 2012 RC2 is available, people will certainly start updating their labs – and finding out that the SQL version check in the ConfigMgr installer is looking for some very specific SQL maintenance levels.  (I’ve pulled out plenty of my own hair doing this recently.) ...

One of the steps in the Configuration Manager installation process is to manually create the “System Management” container in Active Directory, then give the ConfigMgr computer account the ability to create objects in it. Yes, even with Configuration Manager 2012, this is still something...

As part of the BDNA “SCCM Guru” webcast series, I will be presenting on November 17th from 11:00am to 12:00pm Pacific time.  The topic of the presentation: Inside a ConfigMgr 2012 OS Deployment Task Sequence In this webcast with Michael Niehaus, Microsoft’s “Deployment Guy”, you will learn: The...

I gave a presentation today at the TechEd New Zealand conference on “Customizing the User State Migration Tool 4.0” – something I’ve talked with customers about back from my consulting days (way back when, probably with USMT 2.6 at that point – remember that one and its...

The new application model in Configuration Manager 2012 will require administrators to study up on how best to deploy software – this isn’t anything like traditional software distribution like you would find in ConfigMgr 2007. I recently set up Office 2010 as an application in ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2. ...

After MMS 2010, I had posted a series of blog postings talking about different mechanisms for managing drivers with ConfigMgr 2007.  You can read through that at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2010/04/29/configmgr-2007-driver-management-the-novel-part-1.aspx . Then a hotfix was released...

This one goes back several years to when I was routinely writing code that used the ConfigMgr SDK (although in an odd coincidence, I was writing such code again yesterday).  It was pretty easy to run some buggy code that didn’t quite do what was intended, and as a result ConfigMgr might be left...

Some of you probably noticed a new download showed up today: The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 SP1 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0aee2b4b-494b-4adc-b174-33bc62f02c5d Be sure to read the “readme” that goes along with this...

As part of the “ConfigMgr Driver Management: The Novel” blog postings (see http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2010/04/29/configmgr-2007-driver-management-the-novel-part-1.aspx for the first part) and in various presentations I mentioned that most of the challenges with driver management in ConfigMgr...

Some people noticed that during an OS deployment task sequence, performed either by MDT 2008 Lite Touch or by ConfigMgr, could capture sensitive information (from unattend.xml, variables.dat, etc.) as part of the automatic System Restore snapshot process that happens whenever a new driver, application...