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…
[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 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…
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…
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…
UPDATE 7/28/2017: Microsoft released Configuration Manager CB 1706 which now collects both UEFI and Secure Boot inventory by default when clients are running CB 1706 or later. UEFI only inventory was first included in CB 1702. Now that Windows 10 has been released, you are probably starting to take a closer look at the new…
If you are starting to deploy Windows 10 (or are currently deploying Windows 8/8.1), then now is the time to make the switch to UEFI. A system needs to be configured for UEFI (without Compatibility Support Module being enabled) in order to take advantage of Secure Boot (and other Windows 10 security features like Device…
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