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  • Yes, Microsoft broke VBScript in the new ADK

    A new Windows 11 22H2 release of the ADK appeared a couple of days ago, and it didn’t take long for some to notice an issue with it: It turns out that the VBScript.dll just isn’t there. It could probably be added back (ideally from a matching Windows 11 build 25398 media) and re-registered, but…

  • Run an MDT task sequence during Autopilot

    Updated 2023-10-23: See this post for more information around this. This one might sound a little strange, but hear me out. What if you wanted to run a task sequence during an Autopilot provisioning process, but you didn’t want to mess with Configuration Manager? Well, MDT can run task sequences too, so why not take…

  • What’s wrong with Hybrid Azure AD Join?

    You’ve probably heard someone say it before: Don’t do Hybrid Azure AD Join, move to Azure AD Join. What they are generally referring to is more specifically talking about Windows Autopilot and its user-driven Hybrid Azure AD Join scenario, in which Windows Autopilot joins a device to Active Directory and enrolls it in Intune. But…

  • Track anything using ESP

    I’ve talked in the past about how the Enrollment Status Page in Windows Autopilot can be extended using additional providers. The basic structure is described in the EnrollmentStatusTracking CSP (using the old name for ESP, which would have been EST instead of ESP, not that ESP is any better than EST). Using this, other software…

  • Deploy SCCM images with something other than SCCM

    I’ve stated many times that you could take an image from MDT and deploy it with anything, as there’s nothing MDT-specific captured in the image. But curiously, I’ve never heard any comments about the inverse of that, taking an SCCM image and deploying it with MDT or other tools like Tanium Provision. But someone asked…

  • Detecting when you are in OOBE

    People have asked in the past what the best way to detect when you are using Windows Autopilot to deploy a device, so that some apps and potentially even settings are deferred until a later point in time. When you boil this down, it’s a little more general than that. All you really need to…

  • User interaction in OOBE: Challenge accepted

    When you are going through the OOBE process in Windows 11*, have you ever noticed that anything executing that displays a UI can’t be seen? A good example is the task sequence progress dialog that you would expect to see related to my previous post. You can tell that it is there by using Alt-Tab,…

  • Run an SCCM task sequence during Autopilot HAADJ

    My previous post on this topic covered how to do this with Azure AD Join. In that scenario, getting the Configuration Manager client installed and functioning is easier to do since it supports using an Azure AD user token for authentication. The same thing doesn’t work for Hybrid Azure AD Join (even though there should…

  • Dissecting an SCCM bulk registration token

    When looking at feasible processes for installing the Configuration Manager client using the “Co-management settings” feature in Intune with Hybrid Azure AD Join, bulk registration tokens appeared to be the best option. (I haven’t yet given up on PKI certificates, but there are challenges with that.) But since I hadn’t used these before, I figured…

  • Compact a Hyper-V VHDX from a Linux VM

    It’s easy enough to compact a VHDX file attached to a Windows VM: Just shut down the VM, then edit the disk and specify “Compact” as the action: But for Linux VMs, Hyper-V doesn’t understand the disk contents as well (at all?) so you have to add an extra step. From a command prompt (sudo…

  • Run an SCCM task sequence during Autopilot

    When I first heard about Windows Autopilot (before it was even called Windows Autopilot), the first thing I thought (knowing how limited MDM-delivered configuration could be) was “how can I run an SCCM task sequence during a Windows Autopilot provisioning process.” So I tried it, and failed miserably. It was just too messy to do,…

  • Creating a wildcard cert on Windows using LetsEncrypt

    While in theory you can easily generate internal certificates for internet-based usage, as long as you deploy your CA’s trusted root certificate, there are times (e.g. Windows Autopilot + AAD Join + Co-Management Settings + CMG) when that’s just not practical. But since you can easily get free certificates these days, it’s worth some effort…

  • Windows Autopilot testing with VMs

    We all test with virtual machines whenever possible, right? I know I always have, and for expediency I typically went through this process: Create a new VHDX file from the latest Windows 11 ISO downloaded from https://my.visualstudio.com, since these are fully-patched. You can use the Convert-WindowsImage.ps1 script on GitHub to do that. Create a new…

  • 2023 might be Windows 11’s year after all

    Back in early 2023, I argued in a blog post that 2023 would be a good year to evaluate Windows 11 so that you could start deploying it with the release of Windows 11 23H2 around October of this year. That made the assumption that Windows 11 23H2 would be another full feature upgrade (in-place…

  • What is the Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure Edition, and how does it do Azure AD Join?

    Microsoft started talking about an Azure-specific version of Windows Server 2022 back in 2021. So what is it? As Orin’s blog post describes it: Windows Server Azure Edition is a special version of Windows Server built specifically to run either as an Azure IaaS VM in Azure or as a VM on an Azure Stack…

  • Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo.ps1 updated, by Microsoft this time

    Updated 2023-06-12 16:32 PST. Version 3.8 of Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo has been posted, fixing the -AddToGroup dependencies. So everything should be working as expected now, and using the new Microsoft.Graph modules. Updated 2023-06-12 14:07 PST. Now version 3.7 of Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo has been posted, changing the Write-Information lines back to Write-Host. But there’s another problem with -AddToGroup, updated…

  • Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo.ps1 updated, but not by Microsoft?

    The original version of Get-WindowsAutopilotInfo.ps1 was designed to solve a specific problem: How to get the hardware hash from an existing machine and put it into a (somewhat non-standard) CSV file that can be uploaded to Intune, Microsoft Store for Business, or even Partner Center. I created this initially while still working in Windows marketing…

  • Off on a tangent: Is a CompTIA A+ certification worth it?

    It’s always the simple questions that take me down rabbit holes. In this case, it’s a simple question: Is an A+ certification worthwhile for someone wanting to get a job in IT? If you read through the details on the CompTIA web site, you would think this is a certainty: “CompTIA A+ Is the Industry…

  • Creating a kiosk with Linux

    One of the presentations I did this week was about kiosks — how to configure them for various platforms. Since I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with Linux over the past couple of years, that was one of the platforms that I covered. Here’s an overview of what I did to create a…

  • The inner workings of a media creation tool

    I thought to myself “I wonder how many people would download and run a random executable” — implicitly trusting what it does. Of course I already knew the answer — I guess my blog is considered “trustworthy enough” to take the chance. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see my previous blog post.)…