If you are already managing your Windows 10 systems (currently 1607 and below) with System Center Configuration Manager, then chances are you might want to prevent certain users from also being able to “Check online for updates from Microsoft Update.” before you have had a chance to fully test the latest cumulative update or feature…
The history of AZSMUG: We have been planning this meeting for a long time and I really wanted to make this a special meeting. I got the idea to start the user group from a session that I attended at the Microsoft Management Summit in 2006. A Microsoft MVP by the name of Ed Aldrich…
UPDATE 9/17/2016: This issue is resolved in Update Rollup 1 for System Center Configuration Manager current branch, version 1606, so be sure to apply this when upgrading to 1606. As soon as I saw the word on Twitter that Configuration Manager (CM) 1606 was released to the fast ring, I upgraded my primary CM lab that I…
I was recently working on a new Secure Boot State Power BI report and I wanted to use the native view from the ConfigMgr database that was created for the Secure Boot State hardware inventory extension (see Inventory Secure Boot State and UEFI with ConfigMgr). The value that gets returned is 0, 1 or null depending…
At the Midwest Management Summit today in the 7 AM OSD Birds of a Feather session, there was a lot of discussion around troubleshooting PXE booting issues. A reference was made to a session that Troy Martin and I gave at the 2014 Midwest Management Summit called PXE Booting in the Real World. Troy put together…
When starting any operating system deployment project, it is a good idea to know what systems are in your environment so that you can determine which of these systems need to support the new OS. Some systems may need to be replaced, where as others might only need a BIOS UEFI update. It is also…
WARNING 9/30/2016: Installation of Dell Command | Configure version 9.1 will break Hyper-V on workstations that are running it. Basically, the Dell Command | Monitor overwrites some Hyper-V WMI entries and renders it inoperable. The simple fix is to run the following command after installing Command | Monitor on a system running Hyper-V: ‘mofcomp %systemroot%\system32\WindowsVirtualization.V2.mof’.…
I was getting ready for some of my upcoming presentations that I need to give on the BIOS options of the various hardware manufacturers and since some projectors do not always like to display the low level BIOS screens, I thought it would be a good idea to do some screen captures as backup. The following…
When starting any operating system deployment project, it is a good idea to know what systems are in your environment so that you can determine which of these systems need to support the new OS. Some systems may need to be replaced, where as others might only need a BIOS UEFI update. It is also…
HP has a utility that is similar to the Dell’s Command | Configure utility (see How to create a Dell Command-Configure Package in ConfigMgr) called the HP BIOS Configuration Utility that allows for reading and setting BIOS/UEFI values on HP systems. The latest release (version 4.0.13.1 at the time of this blog post) can be found…
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