Posted December 19th, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
Fairly brief post today. One of the many tasks an SCCM admin faces is checking for ConfigMgr duplicate computer records. There are many ways that we can get duplicate records, but here are the three most common: Duplicate MAC Addresses. I normally see this in environments where VDI is common. Generally, a VDI [...]
Posted September 22nd, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
Quick post today. Here’s a t-sql query to update a collection based on a specific Client Status Message. I’m sure you can think of many reasons why this would be handy. SELECT SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name, SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier, SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup, SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client FROM sms_R_System JOIN sms_statusmessage ON sms_R_System.netbios_name0 = sms_statusmessage.machinename JOIN sms_StatMsgInsStrings ON sms_statusmessage.RecordID = sms_StatMsgInsStrings.RecordID WHERE sms_statusmessage.messageid = “<Enter [...]
Tags: Client Status Message, Collection Membership Rule
Posted August 24th, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
I haven’t posted for a while as I’ve been busy with my new job I’m now a Premier Field Engineer working for Microsoft on our SCCM team. For more info on the PFE team visit www.microsoft.com/services. So I thought I’d post one some info on one of the most used SCCM tools – Trace32. I [...]
Tags: ConfigMgr, SCCM, sms, Trace32
Posted April 28th, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
Had an annoying one this afternoon. While trying to install the new (ish) SCCM 2012 Beta 2 the Updated Prerequisite Components wizard wouldn’t download the prereqs. I was able to run the setupdl.exe manually, but still when providing the prereq path to the Updated Prerequisite Components wizards it would still fail. <04-28-2011 14:38:50> INFO: setupdl.exe: [...]
Posted April 21st, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
ZDNet recently ran a case study on Enspire Australia’s new vBlock infrastructure. Check out the video of Geoffrey Nicolas and Ben Hodge – my ex-colleagues and long time friends. http://www.zdnet.com.au/case-study-enspire-vblock-339313585.htm Posted by Matt Shadbolt http://mattlog.net Please comment or click an ad to support this site
Posted March 8th, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
I’m on a scripting rampage at the moment writing tools for the common things I do for each customer. Here’s my latest script. CustomWinPEWIM.ps1 This powershell script will: – Check for prereqs (WAIK, DISM) – Builds the WinPE dev environment (in either x86 or x64) – Mounts the WIM – Prompts to install non-default WinPE [...]
Tags: Windows Boot Image, WinPE
Posted March 7th, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
I’ve been working hard lately on the various USMT migration scenarios using SCCM with hardlinking and State Migration Points. One of the frustrating things during this process is creating ‘user state’. Creating user state for your test migrations is important as you need to ensure that your testing covers the regular places that users will [...]
Posted January 18th, 2011 by Matt Shadbolt
I was wondering today about Windows 7′s network status icon in the system tray and how it tells if there is an Internet connection present. For example, you may have a very strict firewall or proxy that only allows certain sites. In that instance, how does the computer tell if it *actually* has an Internet [...]
Posted December 16th, 2010 by Matt Shadbolt
Here’s a quick and dirty VBScript to find the domain of a certain computer. Great for things like SCCM OS Deployment. strComputer = “.” Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:” _ & “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\” _ & strComputer & “\root\cimv2″) Set colSettings = objWMIService.ExecQuery _ (“Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem”) For Each objComputer in colSettings Wscript.Echo “Domain: ” & objComputer.Domain [...]
Posted October 26th, 2010 by Matt Shadbolt
I’m a big fan of BackBlaze (www.backblaze.com) and I use it to backup all of my machines. One thing that *really* annoys me though, is that by default, BackBlaze will backup your entire hard drive contents.This is a real pain for those who have lots of large files with no need for backup copies in [...]
Tags: BackBlaze, Backup, Backups