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. It will then parse through the associated passwords and remove all that does not match the one associated with the local machine.

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Backup System 179

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. I wrote a series of scripts that I put into the build process that do all of the necessary steps in readying the TPM for bitlocker as shown below.

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Dell LAN System Report 172

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. The following is how to use Carbon Black to list the machines: Log into the Carbon Black Cloud Portal Click the Investigate tab In the investigate search field at the top, enter the following: Enter process_username: in the search field at the top. needs to be changed to the actual user

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Cloud Report Data How To 166

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. It then calculates the number of days and writes this to an object with the computer name and the number of days since the last reboot. It will write this info to a CSV file.

Report 210

Report Windows System 210

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.

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Firewall Groups Web Services Tools 155

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. I specified in the customsettings.ini file to write all build logs to this specific directory: SLShare=BUILDPRODDeploymentShare$Logs SLShareDynamicLogging=BUILDPRODDeploymentShare$Logs%ComputerName% When I went into the logs, I opened up the only log there, BDD.log, and found that it could not find the task sequence specified in the

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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. The issue I have run into is some of the updates, once extracted, are named the same. To resolve this, I extract each update from the cab file.

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How To 149

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.

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Windows 222

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.

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Tools Report Groups Examples 153

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.

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Programming Company Security 225

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.

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Windows Microsoft 168

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.

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Operating Systems Windows Software Software 191

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.

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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.

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System 132

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.

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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.

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Windows Applications Enterprise Enterprise 154

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. The first tool I use is the PSWindowsUpdate PowerShell module. This allows me to remotely push updates via PowerShell and PSEXEC , in which I can watch the results.

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Windows Enterprise Enterprise Tools 247

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. The intent of this is to track if say a user needs to be temporarily added to the domain admins group for software installation, but then the help desk forgets to remove them.

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Groups Report Tools Software 204

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. The purpose of the tool is to: Detect a cybercriminal who may have gotten one user credential and is now using it to probe machines across the domain Detect a disgruntled employee who may be logging into multiple machines for destructive reasons The tool works by querying the ConfigMgr SQL server for a list of machines users have logged into.

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Report Tools Groups Microsoft 172

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. One is located at %PROGRAMFILES%Microsoft Configuration ManagerAdminConsolebin and the other one is located at %PROGRAMFILES%Microsoft Configuration ManagerAdminConsolebinConfigurationManager. If you are trying to figure out which one to use, the %PROGRAMFILES%Microsoft Configuration ManagerAdminConsolebin is the most logical one.

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Microsoft 197

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.

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Windows Vmware Virtualization System 192

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. The script will not proceed if the DP registry keys are not present so that it can find where the distribution point directory exists to be deleted.

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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.

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System Operating Systems Windows Enterprise 209

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.

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Vmware Virtualization System Disaster Recovery 175

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.

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Virtualization Microsoft Applications Tools 169

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. Other than myself, others that have the ConfigMgr console rarely look at it since they wear many hats in IT.

Report 163

Report System Data 163

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.

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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.

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Hardware Software Software Policies 200

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. One of the new features we are wanting is the reserved space that was introduced in 1903.

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Windows Operating Systems System Storage 217

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. That got me to thinking that most of the tasks he listed can be automated with PowerShell. The script below will automate the following tasks from his list of prerequisites: Backs up the cd.latest directory to the specified UNC path Disables the follo

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Backup Microsoft Data Windows 154

Mick's IT Blog

DECEMBER 31, 2019

I wanted to install the Configuration Manager PowerShell module on my admin machine. After investigating a little, the module does not exist in the Microsoft PowerShell gallery. The PowerShell script below will create the module directory under the WindowsPowerShellmodule directory within %PROGRAMFILES%. It will then copy over all of the necessary files.

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Microsoft Course Video 114

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.

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Dell System Report 143

Mick's IT Blog

DECEMBER 5, 2019

Earlier this year, we had a non-critical SQL server to crash. Come to find out, the backups were successful every night, but the data in the backup was corrupt. Needless to say, the server had to be recreated from scratch. Thankfully it was a non-critical server. We wanted a way to automatically verify SQL backups are valid. Using PowerShell, I wrote the following script that runs RESTORE VERIFYONLY against the latest backup contained in the designated directory.

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Backup Microsoft Data 144

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. The process needed to include initializing the client deployment, waiting for the ccmsetup to begin, and then waiting until the ccmsetup disappears and ccmexec is running.

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System 205

Mick's IT Blog

NOVEMBER 14, 2019

I publish new blog postings to multiple Facebook groups regularly. It can be daunting if there are a lot of groups. Although there are several online options, there is a Google Chrome extension called Toolkit for Facebook that is fabulous. It lets you post to multiple groups while being able to designate a random delay in between posting so you don't go to Facebook jail.

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Groups Google Development 83

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 166

Report System Data 166

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.

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Advertising Policies System Report 129