If you are using the full Win10 media to perform OS upgrades (like using a Configuration Manager Task Sequence), then you are going to want to put the install.wim on a diet. In addition, if you are servicing your WIM with the latest patches, you want to make sure that you are doing it in a way that…
Recently, my team has been doing a lot of testing for our next big Windows 10 In-place Upgrade. We are designing and developing a new process that I call Windows as a Service in the Enterprise (and we plan on sharing this at MMSMOA in May). As part of our testing, we need to test…
In Configuration Manager Dynamic Drivers & BIOS Management with Total Control Part 1, I talked about the requirements for the various scenarios when coming up with a solution for driver and BIOS management. I also gave a glimpse of what the Task Sequence steps look like once the solution is in place. In Part 2,…
When approaching any solution, it is a good idea to come up with a list of requirements that the solution needs to be able to meet. This way you will be sure to start off on the right foot and not have to rip and replace, add to, or redo over the solution in the…
At the Midwest Management Summit 2017, I gave a session called Building the Ultimate Windows 10 UEFI Task Sequence. In this session, I covered both types of BIOS to UEFI Task Sequences – Wipe-and-Load and In-place Upgrade. This blog is going to cover the In-place Upgrade version of the BIOS to UEFI Task Sequence. This Task…
As I was preparing for my Midwest Management Summit 2017 session, Building the Ultimate Windows 10 UEFI Task Sequence, I did a full end-to-end run of the In-place Upgrade Task Sequence and started running into issues. This led me to discover a couple of issues around Configuration Manager (specifically the Format and Partition Disk step) and Windows 10…
In Upgrading the BIOS Part 1, I gave some very important reasons why you should be proactive about upgrading the BIOS on supported systems in your environment. In this blog, I want to discuss the approach to flashing the BIOS along with some lessor understood caveats as it relates to BitLocker, BIOS passwords and UEFI…
Operating systems and software are not the only thing that needs to be upgraded these days. It is really important that the BIOS firmware gets updated as well. Lately, I have been talking to a lot of IT Pros at conferences and user group meetings and I have discovered that not too many people upgrade or…
In BIOS and Secure Boot State Detection Part 1, I talked about the various states a system can be in for the BIOS Mode and Secure Boot state. Having these states defined as OSD variables can be useful in determining what actions need to be performed in order to switch a system to UEFI Native…
With all of the security issues and malware lately, BIOS to UEFI for Windows 10 deployments is becoming a pretty hot topic (unless you have been living under a rock, UEFI is required for a lot of the advanced security functions in Windows 10). In addition, with the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft has introduced…
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