[Update 4/5/2017] This post was based on the MBR2GPT that was released with the Windows Insider build 15007. There are a few things that have changed since then – the /silent switch has been replaced with the /convert switch. Also, it is highly recommended to run MBR2GPT from WinPE 1703 (this is required for earlier…
In my previous post, BIOS to UEFI made easier with Windows 10 Creators Update, I uncovered a hidden gem in the 15007 build of the Windows 10 Enterprise Insider Preview called MBR2GPT. The benefits of this MBR to GPT conversion utility is that it makes it easier to convert systems from BIOS to UEFI and…
Back in December, Microsoft published a blog (Windows 10 Creators Update advances security and best-in-class modern IT tools) where they mentioned a conversion tool for making the conversion to UEFI: “In-place UEFI conversion We’ve heard from our customers that they want to take advantage of new Windows 10 security investments like Device Guard on their…
I have recorded some end-to-end OSD videos that show a zero touch BIOS to UEFI OS deployment (from a single task sequence without PXE) in order to show that this could be done. I have also captured screen shots from Dell, Lenovo and HP BIOS screens to have when presenting on the BIOS/UEFI topic –…
I have seen a few blog posts lately that talk about splitting large WIM files in order to get them to fit on a USB flash drive that is formatted as Fat32. I am not exactly sure why you would want to do that when you don’t have to, as it sounds like extra work to…
Dell provides multiple tools for getting and setting their BIOS/UEFI settings. In previous posts, I have talked about Dell Command | Monitor, which can be used to inventory Dell specific hardware settings using Configuration Manager (see How to Inventory Dell BIOS and UEFI Settings with ConfigMgr Part 1 and How to Inventory Dell BIOS and UEFI…
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…
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…
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