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Om Michael Petersen

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Power management trough the TS (No more automatic Sleep!)

  I have a number of customers who wants to set the power settings trough the TS, as opposed to using GPO’s. I guess that makes sense if you want to allow you users to change the settings them self… By default windows 7 will set the following power options: Sleep/standby in 15 min on battery (DC), Sleep/standby in 30 min on Power (AC). Hibernation after 360 min on both AC and DC. Sleep/standby when lid is closed on laptop. Some of my customers do not want their machines to sleep or hibernate, unless the user makes this choice. this [...]

By |2011-06-06T12:17:22+01:00juni 6th, 2011|General info, OS Deployment|1 Kommentar
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Set default keyboard settings based on Running OS

While doing refresh scenarios, its possible to have USMT set the current Keyboard settings for the existing users on the reinstalled OS. The problem however, is setting the same default keyboard settings for new users on that machine.. By default the Keyboard settings will be that of the reference image, so if the keyboard settings in the image is en-US/00000409 it will be so on the deployed machine, unless this is changed somehow ( E.g Unattend.xml, variable, Reg e.t.c) In an XP to Win7 migration scenario (or 7 to 7), you could run a script, to pick up the current [...]

By |2011-06-02T20:51:33+01:00juni 2nd, 2011|OS Deployment|2 Comments
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Personal notes nr.1 – USMT 4.0 with multiple partitions

So to remember all the small stuff/solutions I encounter during my work day, I decided to create a series of short post, as kind of reminder to myself on small tips and tricks , as swell as solutions to basic problems.  I figure that instead of writing this stuff down in a word doc, I might as well share it ( so don’t be surprised if some of the things seams almost to simple )   Today I ran into problems doing hardlink USMT 4.0 on some machines having tree partitions, (one of them being the BDE 300 MB Partition). [...]

By |2011-03-15T12:34:52+01:00marts 15th, 2011|OS Deployment, Personal|1 Kommentar
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Getting a Hardcopy of the TS progress report.

  I guess everyone uses the report showing how fare along a Task Sequence actually is, or if one of the steps has failed. But sometimes this report disappears after the TS finishes, so wouldn’t it be nice to always have it available afterword to see it one or more steps have failed, or to evaluate if an option acts like expected.. Well with a little help from one of my collages (Claus Codam) I created this routine to have that available, in by LOGS folder, and here is how. 1. Create a new user to use for reporting (in [...]

By |2011-01-21T16:09:02+01:00januar 21st, 2011|General info, OS Deployment|5 Comments
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Making file copy easy.

I often run into questions concerning simple file copy during a SCCM/MDT Task Sequence.  There are many ways to accomplish this, but it seams most people wind up using the good old XCOPY command, and in general there is nothing wrong with that. When copying from a DP though, you might run into problems when copying all files and folders in the root on your source, as that points to the root of X:\windows and not the root of the package specified.. Well to work around any issues I created a small VBS script, that takes care of the copying [...]

By |2011-01-17T13:54:24+01:00januar 17th, 2011|General info, OS Deployment|29 Comments
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Create ISO using WAIK and OSCDIMG

  To make an ISO file with a bundle of files, all you need is the Windows Automation Installation Kit WAIK. No need to pay for any 3rd party tool to do this. This Kit includes a tool OSCDIMG primarily used for making a bootable ISO of your WinPE, but can however also be use it to create a simple ISO file containing files, so you can access them trough CD mounting, in your Virtual environments. (or what ever you would need the files for) For this to work you must of cause have the Windows AIK installed on the [...]

By |2010-12-29T09:51:14+01:00december 29th, 2010|General info, OS Deployment|9 Comments
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Capture none syspreped image using SCCM (Running imagex from a TS)

  One of the limitations of SCCM is the use of Imagex. When you want to capture an image of a computer, this computer needs to be syspreped before capture, or the capture process will fail. To do a capture of a reference image before sysprep, you normally would have to create a separate WinPE and run ImageX from that. This is also the case if you want to backup a system. So once again MDT comes to the rescue… By using the ZTIBackup.wsf script, you not only get to run ImageX from a Task Sequence, you also utilize  the [...]

By |2010-10-08T14:06:59+01:00oktober 8th, 2010|Configuration Manager (SCCM), OS Deployment|32 Comments
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Creating a JoinDomain account for use with SCCM OSD

Because The join domain account is often visible in your deployment answer file (unattend.xml of sysprep.inf) during the WinPE phase, it is important that this specific account does not have any more permission, than the bare minimum.. I often experience that a domain admin account is used for this job, which is a huge security breach. When i ask why this is, the answer is normally “ we can not find the information on how to create an account with only join domain rights”. So her is a step by step guide on how to create such an account!   [...]

By |2010-09-16T08:51:26+01:00september 16th, 2010|Configuration Manager (SCCM), OS Deployment|14 Comments
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Using TS variables when running a script under a different account.

One of the features available when running a Task Sequence in Config Mgr R2, is to run a command line as a different user, which can comes in handy in a number of scenarios. There is however a small but important thing to be aware of. When using this step to run a script, you will notice that you cannot use any of the “task sequence variables”, as they are not passed through to script. So if you need to use any of the TS variables in your scripts you will have to pass them to the script as arguments [...]

By |2010-06-10T14:19:38+01:00juni 10th, 2010|Configuration Manager (SCCM), General info, OS Deployment|3 Comments
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Problem finding the Win7 Time Zone names!

Remember In the good old Windows XP days, when the Time Zone you used when creating your Sysprep.inf/Unattend.txt was just a number you could look up in a Microsoft table (and properly also remember) Well those days are almost gone and now you will have to use Time Zone ID which is a Name rather than a number, so the Danish time zone that used to be 105, is now Romance Standard Time… So the question then is, where do i get a hold of those names?? The answer is simple…TZUTIL which is an embedded windows 7 command line tool. [...]

By |2010-02-12T10:28:15+01:00februar 12th, 2010|OS Deployment|1 Kommentar
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The annoyance of none elevated command prompts.

You know how when ever you run something from a prompt in Windows 7 or Server2008 you need to remember to elevate the privileges, or you will get the annoying message that you do not have administrative privileges, which then means you will have to open a new prompt, run it as administrator,  and do things all over again.. (especially annoying when working with WAIK) Well I know that you could just disable UAC all together, but that's not what Microsoft intended when they put it there! and it would also mean a huge decrease in security. So what to [...]

By |2010-02-09T10:17:47+01:00februar 9th, 2010|General info, OS Deployment, Windows Client|Kommentarer lukket til The annoyance of none elevated command prompts.
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Install XP MUI from SCCM Task Sequence.

  Create a new package called Microsoft XP MUI   Note: It is not necessary to create a program for the package unless you intend to advertise the package to clients. The Microsoft XP MUI package should contain the files from the root of one if the MUI installation CD’s, and any language packages you wish to install. In this case a included the Danish, Russian, Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional) language MUI’s. Now open your TS in edit mode, and add a Run Command Line step at the end of your TS (or at least after the Mini setup [...]

By |2009-08-25T15:20:39+01:00august 25th, 2009|OS Deployment|6 Comments
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Changing boot order in Vista/Windows 7

If you do not want to play around with BCDedit or 3rd party tools like EasyBCD, it is quit easy to change boot order from within Windows 7. I Know that this is kind of low tech, but I notice a lot of  questions out there regarding, how to change the boot order using BCDedit. Here goes: Go to Computer – Properties. Note: You can also do this by hitting the key combo Windows + Pause/Break or Click on Advanced System settings Open the Advanced tab In the Startup and Recovery section click on Settings Note: run sysdm.cpl to go [...]

By |2009-08-17T09:08:39+01:00august 17th, 2009|General info, OS Deployment, Windows Client|4 Comments
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Resizing a Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)

Ever run into problems with a VHD that ran out of space?? I did just yesterday, and found a couple of solutions for that problem. Here are two ways of dealing VHD size issues . Methode 1: Using 3rd part tool “VDH Resizer” Download and install VHD Resizer. http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx Open VhdResizer and point to the file you VHD you want resized. Choose a location to put the new file, and choose a new size. The resizing process might take a while, but be patient, it will be worth the wait.   When the resizing is done start a the virtual pc [...]

By |2009-08-06T08:37:18+01:00august 6th, 2009|OS Deployment, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)|1 Kommentar
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Enable Integration features for Virtual PC Beta running server 2008

Running on Windows 7 it obvious you would use the new Windows Virtual PC Beta. There is a problem however, when you want to run a Server2008 virtual PC. The server it self runs great, and is much faster than Virtual PC2007, but like in Virtual server2005 Drag’n Drop is not supported. This Should basically not be a problem because the integration features gives you access to all the host machines drives (including USB).  Only problem is that it doesn't seam to work on Server2008. It might work at first, but after a couple of reboots the integration features suddenly [...]

By |2009-08-03T11:55:16+01:00august 3rd, 2009|OS Deployment, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Windows Client|9 Comments
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