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  • You can now target ESP profiles to devices

    While the Hybrid Azure AD Join over VPN process probably gets people more excited, another change went live in Intune at the same time:  The ability to target enrollment status page (ESP) profiles to groups of devices.  Prior to this change, you could target groups containing users, and you could use the default ESP profile…

  • Windows Autopilot user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join: Which VPN clients work?

    In my previous post, I talked about the new VPN support for user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join.  I described the key VPN requirements: The VPN connection either needs to be automatically established (e.g. “always on”) or it needs to be one that the user can manually initiate from the Windows logon screen.  For the “manually…

  • Windows Autopilot user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join over the internet using a VPN

    It has taken a long time, and there have been plenty of bumps along the way, but it’s finally available in public preview:  You can perform a user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join deployment over the internet, using a VPN connection to establish connectivity so the user can sign into the device.  Before we get into…

  • Hacking or useful IT tool? You decide.

    In my job I tend to do a reasonable amount of research.  (And by research, I don’t mean searching for a term in your favorite search engine and clicking on the first five non-advertising links in the result.)  As part of that research, I came across a reference in the Google Chrome Enterprise documentation that…

  • Make ESP look better by disabling FSIA

    Leave it to Microsoft to turn everything into an acronym.  So let me start with definitions: ESP = Enrollment Status Page.  This shows the progress of the Windows Autopilot device provisioning process, in two different phases:  device ESP, which tracks the device configuration, and user ESP, which tracks the user configuration after the user is…

  • Do not clone an Azure AD-joined or MDM-enrolled Windows 10 OS

    The Windows guidance goes back many years: Before you can duplicate or clone a Windows installation (whether physically duplicating the disk drive or using some sort of VM-based snapshot or differencing disk technique), it is absolutely essential that the system be generalized using Sysprep.exe.  That’s also called out in KB 314828: When you deploy a…

  • Creating a kiosk or digital sign using Windows Autopilot, Intune, and Edge (Chromium)

    Way back when (two years ago to the day actually), I posted a blog that described how to use Windows Autopilot self-deploying mode to create a kiosk that displayed a web page using the Kiosk Browser app.  You can refer back to that post for the basics of the scenario. Later on, I set up…

  • MDT build 8456 needs an update for Windows 10 2004

    There is a new update available for MDT to address an issue that arises from Windows 10 2004 and the corresponding ADK release: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4564442/windows-10-deployments-fail-with-microsoft-deployment-toolkit The issue would only be encountered if you are using non-UEFI devices (physical or VMs).  Due to a change in underlying API behaviors, MDT then could not determine if the device…

  • New in Windows 10 2004: Better Language Handling

    It might seem like a very long time ago, but at the Microsoft Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, there was a theater session presented: THR4002:  Solving Windows 10 feature updates in a multilingual deployment You can watch the video for all the details, but I want to focus on one specific slide that talks about…

  • Ensuring you can capture a screenshot from a remote Hyper-V VM

    This should be a trivial exercise.  I should be able to connect to a remote Hyper-V server using Hyper-V Manager, connect to a specific VM, and interact with it as if I were on the server.  Since I typically use Azure AD Join, that’s not as simple as it should be.  Over the years, I’ve…

  • Windows 10 Enterprise 2004 is available

    You probably saw the announcements: How to get the Windows 10 May 2020 Update What’s new for IT pros in Windows 10, version 2004 And yes, it’s available on VLSC as well, pre-patched to include the May cumulative update (and that will be updated every month): As noted in the “what’s new” post, there are…

  • Deploying Edge without a desktop shortcut, the easiest way

    First, I described a messy way to get rid of the Edge (the Chromium-based one) desktop shortcut.  That led to some Twitter discussions with the Edge team, resulting in a new MSI command line parameter that I blogged about separately, and a promise to later add a Group Policy setting to turn it off more…

  • Digging into Hybrid Azure AD Join

    I’m sure most of you are aware that Windows Autopilot supports a user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join scenario.  That’s not what I’m talking about here.  I want to talk about Hybrid Azure AD Join itself, which seems to be surprisingly misunderstood by a lot of IT pros.  And there’s probably good reason for that.  Let’s…

  • Try out the new Windows Package Manager

    My initial response when reading through the Windows Package Manager Preview announcement from the Build event was “ugh, another package manager” (on top of OneGet, NuGet, Chocolately, etc.).  But it is immediately useful, mainly because of the apps that are available.  The easiest way to install it is manually using the .appxbundle from https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/releases (download…

  • Renaming Autopilot-deployed Hybrid Azure AD Join devices

    As some of you have noticed, the naming convention allowed for Windows Autopilot Hybrid Azure AD joined devices isn’t particularly flexible:  You can specify a prefix (e.g. “AD-“) and the rest of the computer name will be filled in with random characters and digits to pad the name to 15 characters.  So you end up…

  • Two for one: Updated Autopilot Branding and Update OS scripts

    A few days ago, I started working on a new script.  This blog is not about that script, but rather the unrelated issues I encountered while working on that script.  Let’s start with a little history lesson of the two existing scripts. Introducing Autopilot Branding Just over a year ago, I published two blogs (first…

  • A milestone: One million downloads

    Back when I was still in Windows product management/marketing, around the time when Windows Autopilot was first announced in June 2017, I was working with the team to try it out.  “All you need to do is register your device using the hardware hash.”  OK, how do you do that?  With no great answer to…

  • Updated troubleshooting script posted

    After a productive Friday night/Saturday morning, I’ve made a number of script updates.  Let’s start off with the most interesting of them.  The Get-AutopilotESPStatus script has been updated to version 3.6 to add one significant piece of new functionality:  It can now dump a list of all the MDM policies that have been received by…

  • The most useful PowerShell cmdlet I didn’t know existed

    Sometimes I should probably pay more attention.  I use PowerShell a lot.  I use Windows 10 a lot.  But I still missed this one: Some highlights: Want to know if the device is joined to AD?  Check CsPartOfDomain.  Want to know what domain?  Look at CsDomain (which will be WORKGROUP on an AAD-joined device). Need…

  • Fun with Azure: Creating an Azure function

    Sometimes you need to run some code – somewhere.  You don’t care where.  But clients need to be able to get to it.  You don’t want servers, VMs, or web apps, just something very lightweight.  So Azure Functions sounded like a workable solution.  I’m starting from a blank slate: I clicked to add an app…