I am currently on an Operations Manager 2007 project and it's been a lot of fun so far. One of the new concepts of Operations Manager 2007 is that any change made to the provided management packs are done through the use of Overrides. Overrides were very...

One of the cool features of IE7 is that you can easily add any new search provider to your search bar. I use myITforums Forums search quite a bit when finding answers to problems to I created my own search provider for searching their forums. To do this...

I will be posting over the next few months about all of the new management features in Vista. It is easy to say that Vista will be the most "management" friendly OS that we have released to date. To get you started you should really watch the webcast...

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) is now available for download. This download includes the much anticipated Windows PE 2.0 which is the primary installation delivery method of Windows Vista. I have been using the WAIK for several months now...

In case you are not aware, you can use Powershell to manage many aspects of Operations Manager 2007. The Shell team for OM 2007 has started a blog and has a nice introduction to the new tool(s) here: http://blogs.msdn.com/scshell/

Wow it has been a long time since I've posted anything. I have been heads down getting my customers ready to deploy Vista in their environments. There was so much information to keep track of on what we could and could not share, I just decided to keep...

Wow what a week this has been. In the past week we have released Windows Vista RC1 including the new WAIK tools, and USMT 3.0 RC1. You can download both from connect.microsoft.com if you have access. You should also be able to download Vista RC1 from...

I'm not sure how I missed this one but the update for the Motorola Q is now available. This update includes the much anticipated Security Update which allows True Exchange 2003 push. Motorola has also included easier support for tethering your Q to your...

Well I am back after having a week at Techready 3 in Seattle and a week of vacation. I have caught up with the over 400+ email messages and am back to blogging. Techready 3 was awesome. We have SOO many great products coming out in the System Center...

Chris Haaker over at the Blogcastrepository has created a great "blogcast" (screencast for some) on how to use ImageX. http://blogcastrepository.com/blogcasts/37/windows_workstation/entry1586.aspx For those of you who aren't familiar with ImageX, it...

In case you haven't already seen this, Channel9 has posted a great video discussing Bitlocker encryption with Vista. Since I am primarily working on Vista TAP engagements right now this topic is very near and dear to my heart. Here is the link to the...

I was playing around in Powershell today and ran into this nice set of commands that will show you what Updates have been installed as known by the Windows Update Agent: First create a variable and bind it to the "Microsoft.Update.Searcher" Com Object...

I often get asked, "What is it that you actually do for Microsoft?" Well the short answer is that I am a consultant in the Managment, Operations, and Deployment space. Unless they are IT savvy that usually generates a deer in the headlights look. For...

Mow posted another great blog entry on how to access User properties in Active Directory with Powershell. This guy's blog is just awesome. You should definitely start to grab his feeds: http://mow001.blogspot.com/2006/07/powershell-and-active-directory...

Thank you Rod for all of the links to my blog posts. Rod stated here ( http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/rtrent/archive/2006/07/03/21768.aspx) that I "was" a great community person. Well I hope to continue to be a great community person. I feel like I am...

Back to a topic that I know I won't get dinged on. :) I was playing arround with the list of available COM ProgID's by using the command in Jeffrey Snover's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2006/06/29/650913.aspx I ran this command...

Ok. After the slack I took for my last my post: http://blogs.technet.com/tmintner/archive/2006/07/03/440029.aspx I did some research as to why I was being charged for Text messages on my phone when I thought I was using DirectPush with Exchange Server...

***Quick Update*** Thanks to all who posted comments and emailed me. It turns out that the wrong setting was turned on with my phone. I was using a pre-Windows Mobile 5 feature that used Text Messaging. Sorry for the confusion and thanks to everyone...

I was working onsite with a client last week and we were testing SMS V4 (SCCM 2007) OS Deployment features. While we were working we were having numerous client connectivity errors and often had to pull up good ol' notepad or SMS Trace to find the errors...

If you have downloaded and used RC1 of Powershell you will see that the Execution Policy is set to restricted by default. This essentially means that scripts do not function by default within Powershell. Although this is a great security feature that...

If you are into printed books there are a couple of really good Powershell books that you should check out. O"Reilly has a great book simply titled Monad. This book was originally written on one of the beta versions of Powershell but if you purchase...

Rod Trent has created an upload area for MOM 2005 reports and Management Packs. I know that creating custom reports can often be challenging to a non DBA so if you have taken the time to create custom reports please share them with the Management Community...

I have been learning the syntax of Powershell so I thought I would write a simple little script to search Active Directory for the mobile phone numbers of my co-workers. This script will accept an input of lastname and even take wildcard characters so...

Here is a quick little Powershell script that I find useful to see what I have installed on my system. This will return the installed program and the date that it was installed: get-wmiobject -class "win32reg_addremoveprograms" -namespace "root\cimv2...

One of the more interesting features of Windows Vista is that it limits control of an administrative account so that you have to provide credentials or confirm an action that requires administrative privileges. If you are not a local administrator then...