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…
In this blog post, I am going to show some simple steps that you can add to your Task Sequences to be able to detect, disable, and enable BitLocker status. This can be useful (and necessary) when performing activities like flashing the BIOS, running the new MBR2GPT utility, or upgrading to a newer version of Windows.…
[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…
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…
In this video I will show you that it is possible to go from Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB to Windows 10 Enterprise CB or CBB. This process is simply an in-place upgrade – much like going from Windows 10 1507 (July 2015 release – build 10240) to Windows 10 1511 (November 2015 Update –…
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