Protecting My Precious MEMCM

If you have worked with Microsoft Endpoint Manager Configuration Manager (MEMCM, CM for short and previously known as SCCM) for more than a day, you are probably aware of its immense power that it can yield on any and all of the clients it manages. It has an extremely mature Role Based Administration model that…

Adding DaRT to 2PS iPXE

The Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (aka DaRT) is a powerful toolset that is available to Software Assurance customers. Johan Arwidmark recently wrote a post called Back to Basics – Reset the Windows 10 Admin Password using DaRT that covers the steps for creating the recovery media. The DaRT Recovery Image Wizard will generate a…

Lord of the Deployment Rings

If you have been involved with any kind of Windows deployments or Windows Update deployments in the last five or so years, you probably heard of the concept of deployment rings. Microsoft has been pushing this concept ever since they have moved to an ‘as a Service’ model for Windows 10 and other Microsoft products…

Configuring WoL with Configuration Manager – Part 1

4/5/2020 Not only can Configuring Wake-On-LAN (WoL) improve your company’s software distribution success rates, it can also help out in the time of a crisis. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, more and more companies are encouraging those employees that are able to do so to work from home. This presents challenges for IT as there…

Nomad Software Update LsZ File Purge aka whack-a-mole

In short, there is an issue in Configuration Manager CB 1806 where an additional file (*express.cab) gets included with some software updates. This causes Nomad to generate a LsZ file that contains download instructions for two files as seen below: ; Format=0003 (UNICODE) with alt hash ; Package Version = 1       . ; Data Format…