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…
If you have already started working with UEFI devices, then you have probably figured out a few of the gotchas when it comes to booting these devices. First, you need to boot the device using the native architecture. So, if the device you are attempting to boot is a 64-bit device, then it needs to boot with a…
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…
The history of AZSMUG: We have been planning this meeting for a long time and I really wanted to make this a special meeting. I got the idea to start the user group from a session that I attended at the Microsoft Management Summit in 2006. A Microsoft MVP by the name of Ed Aldrich…
UPDATE 9/17/2016: This issue is resolved in Update Rollup 1 for System Center Configuration Manager current branch, version 1606, so be sure to apply this when upgrading to 1606. As soon as I saw the word on Twitter that Configuration Manager (CM) 1606 was released to the fast ring, I upgraded my primary CM lab that I…
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’.…
Mike's Tech Blog 