Enable LENOVO TPM Security Chip (and other stuff) from a TS

  I have some customers who run strictly Lenovo Computers (laptops and Desktops). On a lot of these computers the security Chip has been disabled or is in Inactive mode, thus not allowing the use of Bitlocker. I just finished messing around with activating the TPM Chip in the BIOS From a Task sequence on those LENOVO computers, and once all the minor obstacles were figured out, it turned out to be quiet easy. The first thing I wanted to do was to check if the TPM chis was already Active, and if not, Activate it. This is actually real [...]

By |2011-08-25T10:23:00+01:00august 25th, 2011|General info, OS Deployment|20 Comments

Changes in Configuration Manager 2012 RC

Configuraiton Manager Beta 2 has been out a few months by now. Most of you have already seen or performed a testdrive of the beta 2 version. Next public relelase will be the release candidat. Some of the changes you can expect to see is described below. As the product is still in beta, all information in this post is subject to change and NO, I do not know anything about a release date. Setup Improved multi-lingual support, during setup you will be prompted for additional languages you wish to install. Those are languages for the console and also for [...]

By |2011-08-19T17:25:02+01:00august 19th, 2011|Configuration Manager (SCCM)|8 Comments

Finding the correct storage driver for Win XP using WMIC

I already wrote a post on how to find the correct driver, for a Intel 6 Series storage controller, which is sometimes named different in XP and 7.  https://blog.ctglobalservices.com/mip/cant-find-the-intelr-6-series-storage-driver/. In that particular case I picked up the correct driver name by installing Windows 7 on the PC, and looking trough device manager..  Today I was with a customer, where installing Windows7 was not an option, and they had two HP machines ( Elite 8200 and 6560b) booth failing upon entering the XP minisetup. Laying down the image using SCCM, was no problem, meaning WinPE was fine driver wise. Clearly the [...]

By |2011-08-18T14:39:00+01:00august 18th, 2011|Hardware & Drivers, OS Deployment|3 Comments

Asset Intelligence 3rd. party software utility

Configuration Manager 2007 and 2012 allows you to import licens information from a CSV file. The data are shown in the License 15A – General License Reconciliation Report. The problem for many is, that it’s often a bit to difficult to create the CSV file in the correct format. Highly inspired by the CM2007 AILW utility we decided to create our own tool and make it work for both Configuration Manager 2007 and the upcoming 2012 version. You can download the utility here. Configuring the utility Once you have downloaded our utility you have to: Copy CT-AILW.exe to C:\Program Files\Coretech\AILW\ [...]

By |2011-08-16T11:19:27+01:00august 16th, 2011|Configuration Manager (SCCM), General info|44 Comments

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta: Creating an overview of RunBooks using Orchestrator Web Service and PowerPivot For Excel

In my opinion, one of the greatest improvements in Orchestrator compared to Opalis is the extended web service. Opalis did have a web service too, but the Orchestrator service has a more functionality. One way to utilize this new web service is by using PowerPivot for Excel. PowerPivot for Excel is an addon developed and published by Microsoft. You can read more and download a trial here using PowerPivot for excel , it is possible to connect to all different types of data sources and create real-time reports. It is really easy to do, specially with a web service like [...]

By |2011-08-08T09:00:00+01:00august 8th, 2011|Automation|3 Comments

Updated version of the Configuration Manager shutdown utility

Based on feedback we have updated our Shutdown utility described in this post to include a company log. To display the logo, create a jpg, png or bmp files in the same folder as the utility and name it shutdowntool.jpg/png/bmp – simple Download the new version here: ShutdownTool-0.6.0.zip Once again, credit goes to Claus Codam for being the main developer

By |2011-08-02T09:21:19+01:00august 2nd, 2011|Configuration Manager (SCCM), General info|8 Comments

System Center Orchestrator 2012 Beta: Using Run .Net Script Activity – PowerShell: Inputting and Returning Data

[download id="50"] This article describes how to use the Run .Net Activity to run PowerShell Scripts. I have created an example runbook which does the following: Start once every minute. Read a text file containing a list of sites/servers. Parse the list to PowerShell script. PowerShell script tried to ping each address and get the response time. PowerShell script output formatted HTML, ready to put inside a HTML Table, containing the addresses and response time. Runbook writes a web site based on a HTML template. The result is a website, in my case it looks like this: NB! some websites/server [...]