Expert insights. Personalized for you.
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.
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.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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
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.
Speaker: Jeremiah Morrow, Nicolò Bidotti, and Achille Barbieri
In this webinar, learn how Enel Group worked with Agile Lab to implement Dremio as a data mesh solution for providing broad access to a unified view of their data, and how they use that architecture to enable a multitude of use cases.
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 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
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
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
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.
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.
Speaker: Eran Kinsbruner, Best-Selling Author, TechBeacon Top 30 Test Automation Leader & the Chief Evangelist and Senior Director at Perforce Software
In this session, Eran Kinsbruner will cover recommended areas where artificial intelligence and machine learning can be leveraged for DevOps productivity.
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
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.
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
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".
Speaker: Karl Camilleri, Cloud Services Product Manager at phoenixNAP
Through a detailed analysis of major attacks and their consequences, Karl Camilleri, Cloud Services Product Manager at phoenixNAP, will discuss the state of ransomware and future predictions, as well as provide best practices for attack prevention and recovery.
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
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
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
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.
Speaker: Nico Krüger, Senior Director of Solutions Engineering at Rollbar
Join Nico Krüger, Senior Director of Solutions Engineering at Rollbar, for advanced insight on taking the use of DORA Metrics to greater heights.
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.
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.
Advertisement
This report examines the quantitative research of data leaders on data value and return on investment.
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.
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
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
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.
Advertisement
Enterprises poured $73 billion into data management software in 2020 – but are seeing very little return on their data investments. 22% of data leaders surveyed have fully realized ROI in the past two years, with 56% having no consistent way of measuring it.
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.
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.
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
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.
Advertisement
Businesses today compete on their ability to turn big data into essential business insights. Modern enterprises leverage cloud data lakes as the platform used to store data. 57% of the enterprises currently using a data lake cite improved business agility as a benefit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Advertisement
Data architectures have evolved dramatically. It is time to reconsider the fundamental ways that information is accumulated, managed, and then provisioned to the different downstream data consumers.
172 
Let's personalize your content