Out of Office Hours

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  • p.s. A PowerShell conundrum

    In my previous post, I mentioned changing some PowerShell cmdlets.  Here’s the definition for the cmdlet used to create a new item: It’s simple enough:  You specify the required mode and display name, and one of several switches.  If specified, the setting is enabled; if left out, the setting is disabled.  Fairly standard stuff. But…

  • Updated WindowsAutopilotIntune module posted

    As I have been working my way through an e-mail backlog, I have been making adjustments to the WindowsAutopilotIntune module to address feedback and requests from those that contacted me.  The first request was to be able to get the same information as what you can see in the new Windows Autopilot deployment report (which…

  • What happened during Windows Autopilot ESP? Decode it.

    One of the challenges with Windows Autopilot that I’ve talked about at various events is troubleshooting – if everything goes well, you’re happy, but if something goes wrong, figuring out what that “something” was can be challenging.  That’s something that we’re working on improving for future Windows 10 releases, but until then I’ll keep blogging…

  • Deploying the new Microsoft Edge without a desktop shortcut

    UPDATE 2020/04/16: See my updated post for an easier way. Or more accurately, “a crash course into the inner workings of modern browser installers (which really aren’t that modern).”  I really don’t understand why software installers still create desktop shortcuts, especially when that desktop is being synced to the cloud using OneDrive.  But since I…

  • PowerShell on Windows 10 ARM64

    I wrote a blog post back in September that talked about Windows 10 running on ARM64.  In that, I talked a little about WOW64 on ARM64, which enables an ARM64 device to run 32-bit x86 apps, quite useful since many apps don’t yet have ARM64 versions available. But one twist I didn’t expect was with…

  • Configure language settings for any scenario

    You might have noticed that there are new properties available in Windows Autopilot user-driven scenarios, both for Azure AD Join: And for Hybrid Azure AD Join: But if you try it, you’ll find that they do nothing.  That’s because these new options require changes that are present in Windows 10 Insider Preview builds and will…

  • Windows Autopilot device registration options for partners: Using the tuple

    As I discussed in a previous blog, CSP partners (who could be distributors, resellers, or service providers) are able to register devices for Windows Autopilot on behalf of customers using Partner Center, either interactively (upload a CSV file) or via the available APIs.  What I stressed in that blog is that there are multiple ways…

  • The first day in the life of a Hybrid Azure AD Joined device

    That’s the short title.  The long title should really be something like this: The first day in the life of a Hybrid Azure AD Joined device has lasting implications on the rest of the device’s life, at least from an Intune management perspective. And with that, we have both a blog topic and the most…

  • What’s all this stuff in Microsoft 365?

    If you read my last post about Microsoft 365 certifications, you probably noticed that it talks about lots of different products and services – it’s a pretty big suite.  If you’re like me, you are probably aware of the core components like Windows 10 Enterprise, Office 365, Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Teams, and Azure AD Premium,…

  • Getting certified for Microsoft 365

    With the shifts that are occurring with how Windows (and non-Windows) devices are provisioned, managed, and secured, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in certifications and training that show that you’re up to speed on the new technologies and scenarios.  While taking a month of vacation, I decided that if I was going…

  • Year in review: Random blog statistics

    With my blog hosted through WordPress.com, there are all sorts of analytics available to tell me the blogs I’ve posted and the people that are reading them.  Here are some interesting tidbits from those analytics. All total, the blogs I posted in 2019 include over 51,000 words.  Not including images, that would be the equivalent…

  • Year in review: Samples, scripts, tools

    Some of the blogs that I’ve posted are tied to scripts posted to the PowerShell Gallery or tools published to GitHub (or sometimes a combination of the two).  In the case of the scripts, it’s fairly easy to see download counts, so here’s Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo.  Technically this one was around before this year (written while I…

  • Year in review: Blog posts

    It’s been a fairly busy year for blogging, crossing three different blog platforms.  First there was https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mniehaus, with two posts in January 2019: USB media and Windows Information Protection.  If you’ve implemented Windows Information Protection and it keeps messing up your USB boot media, here’s how to fix it. New version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit…

  • Configuring time zones, part 2

    As I mentioned in the preview blog, RFC 4833 describes a mechanism that delivers time zone information via DHCP, but Windows 10 doesn’t include a mechanism for automatically consuming this information.  But that doesn’t mean it can’t be used – it just requires some extra work.  The first challenge is adding the needed options to…

  • Configuring time zones, part 1

    I always wondered why setting time zones was so hard.  Shouldn’t devices be able to figure this out themselves?  For devices like cell phones, this is pretty simple (now at least, since we have digital cell phone services rather than analog ones) as this can be provided directly by the cell network provider (although be…

  • Following the ConfigMgr task sequence bootstrap process

    In my previous blog, I talked about how you could have Intune automatically run a ConfigMgr task sequence during a Windows Autopilot deployment.  For those of you who wanted more information on how this works, here’s some additional details. First, you’ve seen the command line parameters passed into the CCMSETUP.MSI: CCMSETUPCMD=”/nocrlcheck /UsePKICert /mp:https://CONTOSOCM.CONTOSOCM.COM/CCM_Proxy_MutualAuth/72057594037927953  CCMHOSTNAME=CONTOSOCM.CONTOSOCM.COM/CCM_Proxy_MutualAuth/72057594037927953 SMSSiteCode=PRI…

  • Run a ConfigMgr task sequence via Windows Autopilot and Intune

    I’ve mentioned in presentations over the past couple of years that the first thing I tried to do with Windows Autopilot was to run a task sequence, bridging the old and the new.  The idea is simple enough:  Autopilot joins the device to Azure AD or Active Directory and enrolls it in Intune; Intune installs…

  • Updated WindowsAutopilotPartnerCenter module posted

    If you are a CSP partner looking to add devices on behalf of your customers using the Partner Center APIs (you can read my original blog on the topic), you may have noticed that version 1.0 of the WindowsAutopilotPartnerCenter module no longer worked with the latest PartnerCenter module, due to changes made to the authentication…

  • App-based authentication with Intune

    A while back, support for app-based authentication was added for Intune, enabling an app to authenticate and use the Graph API.  That’s mentioned in the Intune documentation, along with the steps to create an app.  Between that documentation, and the similar Graph documentation, you can figure out how to set up an app.  But the…

  • The importance of time

    Before you think I’m going off on a philosophical tangent, let me assure you that I have a point to make, and it is indeed about the importance of time.  More specifically, it’s about the importance of having accurate time – every device being deployed by Windows Autopilot needs to have a “reasonably-accurate” time on…