Mick's IT Blog
AUGUST 3, 2022
I am working on a new package to upgrade one of the applications. This time, it requires I uninstall the old app first before installing the new version. There are two different versions, so I needed to retrieve the uninstall strings for both.
Mick's IT Blog
MARCH 16, 2022
Recently, we needed a report of the last boot time of all servers. I wrote this PowerShell script that queries AD for a list of all windows servers and then does a WMI query on each server for the LastBootUpTime.
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Mick's IT Blog
JULY 1, 2022
This PowerShell script not only backs up the Bitlocker recovery password to AD but also cleans out previous backups made that do not match the current password associated with the machine. The script retrieves the local bitlocker password along with all recovery passwords written to AD.
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.
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Mick's IT Blog
JUNE 30, 2022
Over the years, we have manually configured the TPM before imaging a system as part of our build process. Dell has since given the ability to automate the entire process after giving the option to automate clearing the TPM. That was always been the big stopper in full automation.
Mick's IT Blog
SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
If you have a system that has been infected or the drive had to be replaced, you'll need to lay down a new bare OS and then have autopilot finish up the configuration of the machine. For this, we are using MDT as it is easy to maintain and very fast at imaging.
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.
Mick's IT Blog
JULY 27, 2022
I was recently writing a new PowerShell tool to clean up Configuration Manager of old systems. When I ran the import-module cmdlet, I got the message The module was being imported from the Configuration Manager server.
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.
Mick's IT Blog
AUGUST 2, 2022
The firm I am at has recently upgraded all systems to the newest model Dells. In doing so, some of the settings for configuring WOL have changed in the BIOS. I have rewritten this script to cover all changes to the OS, BIOS, and NIC.
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Mick's IT Blog
MARCH 17, 2022
If you have Carbon Black in your environment, you can use it to identify which machines a user account is logged into. Carbon Black collects a vast amount of data on machines and reports it to the cloud database.
Mick's IT Blog
SEPTEMBER 9, 2020
Normally, windows updates are pushed to machines using Configuration Manager in an enterprise environment. There are occasions though when they must manually be pushed, such as when a system continues to fail via ConfigMgr and troubleshooting is required.
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.
Mick's IT Blog
JANUARY 21, 2022
If you are still using an on-prem version of office, you know the need to populate the Updates folder so updates get applied when Office is installed instead of having to wait for the updates to download and then be installed.
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.
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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.
Mick's IT Blog
JANUARY 24, 2022
I encountered this error when working with MDT right after deleting two old task sequences. To troubleshoot this, I went to the logs directory in the MDT hierarchy.
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.
Mick's IT Blog
SEPTEMBER 1, 2020
This tool queries specified AD groups for new users that have been added to the group within a specified number of days. The script is written so that it can be used with Azure Automation, Orchestrator, or even a scheduled task, with the addition of the send-mailmessage cmdlet.
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Mick's IT Blog
AUGUST 27, 2020
If you use PowerShell with Configuration Manager, you likely know that there are two PowerShell modules named ConfigurationManager.psd1.
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.
Mick's IT Blog
FEBRUARY 21, 2020
The time has come to do another creator update to the corporate systems. We skipped the 1903 upgrade because of the Windows 7 to Windows 10 deployment that completed just after the release of 1903. It was too soon to start another creator update project, so we waited until 1909.
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".
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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.
Mick's IT Blog
NOVEMBER 22, 2019
Recently, I wanted to revisit the process of installing the SCCM client during an MDT task sequence. At first, I tried to use the SCCM PowerShell module to initiate the install. I learned during testing that it does not work if a system is not present in SCCM.
Mick's IT Blog
AUGUST 28, 2020
This tool is designed to report if a user profile has been logged into a defined number of machines or greater over a specified period of time.
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.
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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'.
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.
Mick's IT Blog
MAY 1, 2020
We wanted a list of servers that are waiting for a reboot. Thankfully, ConfigMgr 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.
Mick's IT Blog
JUNE 12, 2020
This script will clean up the legacy items left over after a distribution point has been deleted in the configuration manager console. This is sometimes necessary if the same server is going to be used to re-push the distribution point back down to it.
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Mick's IT Blog
JANUARY 23, 2019
While working on a series of one-liners for configuring the NIC on machines, I created this needed to makes changes to the power management settings of the NIC. This is something that will be implemented in the build, so I also wanted to make the script into a one-liner so the code itself can reside within the task sequence. This one-liner can check/uncheck the boxes within the Power Management tab of the network adapter. There are two ways this can be done.
Mick's IT Blog
JANUARY 2, 2020
With the advent of Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager 1910, I started researching the upgrade requirements. I happened to run into a great blog post by fellow MVP Martin Bengtsson on what should be done before the upgrade takes place.
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.
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. I could not find any PowerShell cmdlets in the SCCM module for viewing a pending restart.
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