Mick's IT Blog

MARCH 7, 2022

I recently had to rebuild the Configuration Manager server. As I was running the prerequisite tool, it showed it could not communicate with the SQL server that is separate from the Configuration Manager Server. The issue ended up being ports needed to be opened up. This PowerShell script will configure the correct ports. It also adds to the description as to what services the port is opened up for in Configuration Manager.

Firewall 153

Firewall Groups Web Services Tools 153

Mick's IT Blog

DECEMBER 20, 2021

I wanted to install Winget via PowerShell in an automated process. The first thing I did was to go to the Winget GitHub site and select the latest version of the Windows Package Manager. Under the latest version page, I clicked on the file with the extension of msixbundle and downloaded it to my machine. Now that it is on your machine, you can automate the installation with a PowerShell one-liner script where the PS1 file resides in the same directory as the Winget installer.

Windows 221

Windows 221

Mick's IT Blog

NOVEMBER 19, 2021

This PowerShell tool queries AD for a list of machines in the specified administrative admin groups. The list is specified by modifying the script with the groups to be queried. The following example shows how to add groups to the query. When there are multiple groups, they can be divided off by using the pipe character between each group. Where-Object {$_.MemberOf -match 'Admins|Domain Admins|System Admins|'} There is the parameter called $Days.

Tools 151

Tools Report Groups Examples 151

Mick's IT Blog

OCTOBER 13, 2021

KB5005652 resolved the "PrintNightMare" vulnerability, but it also brought many companies to a halt when it came to end-users installing printers if they did not have administrator privileges. During the time since the update, we had our help desk install printers for users on an as-needed basis. There was a workaround by setting the RestrictDriverInstallationToAdministrators to 0 to override the fix, but this would have thwarted the security vulnerability.

Programming 224

Programming Company Security 224

Mick's IT Blog

JUNE 29, 2021

Font installation using PowerShell has changed since Windows 10 1909. The old way of doing it with PowerShell no longer works. This new script was originally written by Ben Reader who is a fellow Microsoft MVP from Australia. I took the script and modified it by improving on user interface and file tweaks. This script gets a list of all font files that exist in the same directory.

Windows 166

Windows Microsoft 166

Mick's IT Blog

JANUARY 22, 2021

I was in the process of pushing out the Microsoft Windows 10 20H2 upgrade when I had 23 systems that errored out. They reported the error shown below. After looking at the logs and at Software Center on the target machine, I found the target machine was not seeing the deployment under Operating Systems. The fix was to reinstall the client on the target machine.

Operating Systems 190

Operating Systems Windows Software Software 190

Mick's IT Blog

JANUARY 11, 2021

It is the beginning of 2021 and my first project for the new year is upgrading all systems to Windows 10 20H2. At the end of the upgrades comes the cleanup and there is no clean way to do this for system admins. Cleanmgr.exe is now deprecated as of Windows 10 2004. There is not a PowerShell option for controlling storage sense. The next option is to delete the folder.

Windows 261

Windows System Storage Security 261

Mick's IT Blog

SEPTEMBER 25, 2020

One of my recent projects is to convert our remaining legacy systems from BIOS to UEFI. While setting up the task sequence, I needed to be able to test the system to make sure it was not already UEFI so the task sequence would end if it was. The PowerShell script reads the setupact.log file and extracts if it is configured as BIOS or UEFI. I have included an unknown message in the event the log file does not exist or is inaccessible, which is what I encountered on one machine.

System 130

System 130

Mick's IT Blog

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

As part of the suite of security tools I am writing, this will query the configuration manager SQL database for a list of machines that are not Bitlocker encrypted. There are reports in the configuration manager for this, but not everyone in my organization has access to the configuration manager console, and we wanted a detailed report sent out on a regular basis so that it is in their mailbox with high importance, which is also not available through ConfigMgr.

Report 112

Report Hardware Tools Security 112

Mick's IT Blog

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

In the imaging process I devised, most of the Windows 10 Built-In apps, such as mail and maps, are removed. My company uses the SAC edition of Windows 10 enterprise. This requires us to perform an in-place upgrade every 6 months. In order to prevent the built-in apps from reappearing, you can add specific registry keys that permanently deprovision the apps.

Windows 152

Windows Applications Enterprise Enterprise 152

Mick's IT Blog

AUGUST 21, 2020

We use VMWare for our servers and sometimes virtualized desktops. One of the issues we ran into was expanding the disk space on a virtual machine. When disk space was added, the C: drive could not be expanded because of the reserve drive "being in the way". The additional space would have to be made into a separate drive. To fix this issue, I deleted the Windows 10 recovery partition, which on all of our builds is the fourth partition.

Windows 191

Windows Vmware Virtualization System 191

Mick's IT Blog

MAY 19, 2020

This script will connect to the Zerto server and retrieve a list of systems that Zerto is not backing up. The script has been written so that it can function in the Azure Automation or Orchestrator environment. It can also be used as a scheduled task or executed manually. It excludes desktop operating systems. You will need to install both the activedirectory and zertoapiwrapper modules before using this script.

System 207

System Operating Systems Windows Enterprise 207

Mick's IT Blog

MAY 12, 2020

During the COVID19 pandemic, one of my projects has been to build a new configuration manager server at our newer production site for optimal performance. During this process, we needed to be able to differentiate what servers were on our disaster recovery VMWare server, and what servers were on the production VMWare server. We quickly learned that some of the virtual servers could not be differentiated.

Vmware 173

Vmware Virtualization System Disaster Recovery 173

Mick's IT Blog

MAY 5, 2020

We have a new datacenter and the configuration manager server needed to be moved to that location. The setup of Configuration Manager is not too difficult. I did though run into several gotchas along the way. The first one was a warning that read 'configuration for SQL server memory usage'. I needed at least 8 GB of RAM allocated to the SQL database.

Virtualization 169

Virtualization Microsoft Applications Tools 169

Mick's IT Blog

APRIL 20, 2020

While building my new Configuration Manager server, MECM, I took screenshots of the default antimalware policy settings in the event settings in it ever got changed. The default should not be changed. A new policy should be created and deployed.

Policies 112

Policies Cloud Security 112

Mick's IT Blog

APRIL 13, 2020

I just started building a completely new configuration manager server. While setting it up, I remembered that I wished in the past that I had all of the original default client settings because some did get changed. If you have ever made changes directly to the default client settings and cannot remember what the original settings were, then here is a screenshot of each section.

Software 199

Software Software Hardware Policies 199

Mick's IT Blog

DECEMBER 26, 2019

A recent project of mine was to obtain the Dell manufacture and ownership dates from all systems for depreciation and lifecycle purposes. This information is not readily available in SCCM and on the local machines. Luckily, the newest version of Dell Command | Configure now includes the manufacture date and first power on date. The first power on date, as referenced in DCC, is also the Ownership Date in the BIOS, as shown below.

Dell 142

Dell System Report 142

Mick's IT Blog

NOVEMBER 5, 2019

We wanted a list of servers that are waiting for a reboot. Thankfully, SCCM has a pending restart field that allows admins to see when systems are waiting for a reboot. Our server team wanted that list to be automatically generated and emailed to them daily. Other than myself, others that have the SCCM console rarely look at it since they wear many hats in IT.

Report 165

Report System Data 165

Mick's IT Blog

OCTOBER 30, 2019

I have wrestled with the issue of managing mandatory reboots for quite a while. Back before laptops were introduced into the environment, we used an SCCM package that triggered a reboot once a week. Today, with the majority of systems being laptops and tablets, it is not so easy to implement a reboot. The problem came when the package ran, and a system was offline.

Advertising 127

Advertising Policies System Report 127

Mick's IT Blog

OCTOBER 3, 2019

Recently, I have begun setting up new front and back-office security runbooks in Microsoft Orchestrator. These runbooks needed to use PowerShell for getting data from the SCCM server. The SCCM console is not installed on the Orchestrator server, so PowerShell required to be able to connect directly to it. The following script will import the SCCM PowerShell module, connect to the SCCM server, and then disconnect.

System 130

System Programming Microsoft Security 130

Mick's IT Blog

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

I have used the Dell Command | Update in the build for quite some time for managing the drivers on systems because it makes it a hand-off approach with little setup and reliable updates direct from Dell. The one thing I have wanted to be able to rerun this task several times without having to have duplicate tasks in the task sequence. Sometimes there are multiple reboots required because not all drivers can be installed at the same time.

Dell 152

Dell System Microsoft Applications 152

Mick's IT Blog

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

While writing a new PowerShell script for SCCM, I needed to be able to keep track of how many times a system had rebooted when using the SMSTSRebootRequested. The apparent solution, at least what I initially thought, was to create a TS variable and increment it upon each reboot. It ended up never ceasing the reboot process, and the task reran indefinitely.

System 85

System 85

Mick's IT Blog

AUGUST 21, 2019

One issue, more like a time-waster, I have had as we are migrating to SCCM from MDT is getting the boot image on the WDS server. SCCM is not configured to manage WDS because we use it for other things, so we manually upload the WIM. SCCM creates an ISO that needs to be mounted to extract the WIM for WDS. Thanks to this blog post , it is explained. I wanted the steps automated, so I wrote the following PowerShell script that will perform all of the steps needed to extract and configure the WIM.

Windows 123

Windows Data 123

Mick's IT Blog

AUGUST 20, 2019

Recently, I wanted a simple batch file to run the ccmsetup.exe file. I could have used PowerShell, but for debugging the parameters, I wanted it quick and easy to modify. One of the issues I had was getting the batch script to wait for the ccmexec.exe to install before proceeding. I saw some batch solutions that seemed to be kind of cumbersome. I decided to write a PowerShell one-liner that would continuously loop until the desired process ended.

84

84

Mick's IT Blog

AUGUST 2, 2019

Recently, I have been working on updating several scripts I have written for the build process. One big thing I have wanted is for the script to be able to initiate a reboot without the build process becoming corrupt. An additional functionality I have wanted to implement is to be able to restart the task sequence at the same point it left off before the reboot.

How To 125

How To Windows Research 125

Mick's IT Blog

JUNE 11, 2019

Over the past two months, I deployed the Windows 10 1809 to all Windows 10 machines. We got through 80% of the machines with successful deployments until we reached those last 20% where they did not have enough disk space for both downloading the package and installing it. The package and install require roughly 15 gigs of space, 5 gigs for the package and 10 gigs for the installation.

Windows 109

Windows Programming Security System 109

Mick's IT Blog

JUNE 6, 2019

Recently, we decided to change the power scheme on machines during the build. This can be quickly done using the powercfg.exe, but I wanted to be sure it always set correctly. Plus, the GUID associated with a power scheme can be different, so I wanted to specify the power scheme by the name. This PowerShell one-liner will set the power scheme on a machine to the scheme defined in the variable $Setting.

122

122

Mick's IT Blog

APRIL 15, 2019

If you have been wanting to wake your Dell systems up from sleep, hibernate, or shutdown states, this is how you do it. Starting out with this article from Dell, I got the list of things needed to set up the system for WOL. There are three areas that have to be configured on Dell systems, at least for the systems we have which range from the Optiplex 990 to the Latitude 7490.

LAN 148

LAN Dell System Energy 148

Mick's IT Blog

APRIL 1, 2019

While working on a new compliance policy, I ran into a lot of hurdles that needed to be resolved. One of those hurdles was executing an SCCM package via PowerShell. Using the WMIExplorer, I was able to locate a method that allows you to execute an SCCM package as shown below. Once I located the namespace, class, and method, I needed to find out the name of the package in SCCM that I wanted to execute.

Advertising 143

Advertising Programming Policies Data 143

Mick's IT Blog

MARCH 27, 2019

Recently, I have been working on Configuration Baselines for security purposes. While doing so, two of my baselines required remediation that takes longer than 1 minute. I do not recall where I read it, but I believe the timeout for a compliance check is 1 minute. If the compliance remediation takes longer than 1 minute, then the baseline is designated as non-compliant until the next compliance check is run.

Security 123

Security How To 123

Mick's IT Blog

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

Recently, we ran into the issue of users replacing their keyboard and mouse with Bluetooth devices. What happened was they would lose connectivity and the error below would appear in the event viewer logs. While researching the issue, we found that the user could open up the laptop that was docked and get connectivity back by hitting any key. The culprit was the Power Management setting of the Bluetooth device.

Research 100

Research 100

Mick's IT Blog

FEBRUARY 4, 2019

When our build team builds new machines for users, we provide a convenience to the user of letting them know what their default printer is. I wrote this script that will parse through all user profiles in HKU to find the default printer of each profile. It will then write the results to the screen if the script is manually executed, while also writing to the DefaultPrinter.CSV file located at the default directory of each user profile.

Report 81

Report Company 81

Mick's IT Blog

JANUARY 9, 2019

In Windows 10 1809, I needed to enable some RSAT features that are now included in the OS. I figured this would be a good time to go from using a script to using one-liners for the build process. Mike Robbins's blog was a good start to developing this one-liner. This allows for you to manage the code within the task sequence, thereby negating the issue of storing a script and the possibility of the script accidentally being deleted.

Windows 164

Windows Microsoft Report System 164

Mick's IT Blog

OCTOBER 17, 2018

While planning and configuring the Windows 10 upgrades, we had to also include the transition to UEFI from BIOS. I wanted to make sure that when the build team builds new models that they are configured for UEFI when applicable, otherwise the build fails within seconds after it starts. We use Dell systems, so interacting with the BIOS is simple. The Dell Command | Configure allows for the BIOS to be queried, which is what we need here to verify specific models are set correctly.

Dell 175

Dell System Network Windows 175

Mick's IT Blog

OCTOBER 5, 2018

We have started the Windows 10 upgrades and part of this process is installing applications for users that are not included in the standard build. One option is to use the SCCM Resource Explorer for a list of apps installed. The problem with that is it is a blanket report. It shows everything and all we were wanting is a report of the additional apps installed after a build.

Applications 202

Applications Report Dell Authentication 202

Mick's IT Blog

AUGUST 31, 2018

While building a new reference image, I always want to make sure every application got installed before the WIM is generated. I have done this in the past by placing a pause in the build immediately after the windows update post-application installation is completed. It definitely takes time for me to go through the list of apps and verify they are there.

Applications 20

Applications Report Windows Research 20

Mick's IT Blog

AUGUST 22, 2018

If you have the SLShare variable defined in MDT to write logs to the specified UNC path and the SLShareDynamicLogging defined to write to the same path including the %ComputerName%, you have probably run into the issue of the logs being enormous. This is since each time a system is reimaged with the same computer name, the new logs are appended to the old logs, and they do get big.

System 25

System 25