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  • Is 2023 the year for Windows on ARM64?

    Windows on ARM goes back over a decade. Fortunately, it’s gone from a relatively-crippled device that only ran store apps (Windows RT) to a much more general-purpose device. But is it ready for general use? The answer to that likely depends on your definition of “general use.” I have a collection of ARM64 devices (certainly…

  • Is 2023 the year for Windows 11?

    I’ve stated in various forums that Windows 11 will be successful, whether you like it or not — eventually. That’s because the cost/benefit analysis shifts greatly as Windows 10 gets closer to its October 14, 2025 end date (unless you are running LTSC 2021, which is supported through 2027; LTSC 2019, which is supported through…

  • Windows 11 had a bad year: More links

    I read lots of tech-related media (on top of lots of tech-related podcasts); it’s probably a holdover from my Windows marketing and product management days when it was important to stay on top of this stuff. Now, it’s my source of entertainment. Not surprisingly, there’s been lots of Windows 11-related information posted over the past…

  • Windows 11 had a bad year

    Windows 11 was originally released in October 2021, and a second new release (22H2) came out in December 2022. Overall, how is it doing? From all signals, it appears to be doing fairly poorly. One example, captured from Statcounter: This measures usage based on web browser data — maybe not the most reliable way to…

  • Want to see end of life dates for, well, anything?

    The Windows 10 and Windows 11 release information pages are useful, and there’s also the Microsoft Lifecycle site (not quite as useful as you have to decipher it), but what if you want more than that, especially if you have to worry about multiple vendors? Fortunately, there’s a website for that, https://endoflife.date, which I saw…

  • Now released: VMware Fusion for running Windows on ARM on M1/M2 Macs

    After a long technical preview period, the released product is finally available. The official announcement can be found here. The previews were fairly rough — functional, but certainly with some rough edges. See my previous post for an overview. So how does this new version look? When it comes to creating a new Windows 11…

  • The mysterious case of broken time sync

    Today was kind of weird — after having a brief conversation about time sync during OOBE that brought back a bunch of memories, touching on a blog that I did talking about the importance of time, I ran into a time sync issue of my own just a few hours later. While testing out a…

  • Project Volterra: my new ARM64 “toy”

    Yes, I am a fan of Windows running on ARM64 hardware. I have a few existing ARM64-based devices, including a super-underpowered one, a surprisingly powerful M1-based Mac Mini that runs Windows ARM64 very well in VMs, and a laptop that has become my travel companion when I want to have a full day of battery…

  • Get ready (and get MDT ready) to deploy Windows 11 22H2

    While many are still sticking with Windows 10, those that have already made the leap to Windows 11 or plan to start investing heavily in devices with 12th generation Intel processors will want to take a serious look at Windows 11 22H2. If you don’t know what’s new in this release, check out the changewindows.org…

  • Windows 22H2’s are here

    While Windows 11 22H2 gets most of the attention, there is also a new Windows 10 22H2 release. So which one will you deploy, and how will you deploy it? The quick summary: You’ll have to do a full feature update (in-place upgrade) to get to Windows 11 22H2, while Windows 10 22H2 requires just…

  • Prompt for time zone (and maybe other stuff) during Autopilot

    In one of my sessions this week at the Workplace Ninja Summit, I included a video that showed how you could modify the OOBE flow to prompt for the time zone that should be used in the device, and (very quickly) showed how it worked, promising to post more information. This is that information. First,…

  • Want your own Windows 11 21H2 ARM64 ISOs?

    I was trying out Parallels Desktop 18’s new feature that allows it to automatically download Windows 11 for ARM64 to install a new VM, and wondered how exactly that worked. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much effort to figure that out (with Fiddler to help). The basic flow is like this: Download the file https://download.microsoft.com/download/1/b/4/1b4e06e2-767a-4c9a-9899-230fe94ba530/products_Win11_20211115.cab and…

  • Getting rid of Teams (consumer), revisited

    My previous post on removing the consumer version of Teams from Windows 11 (to avoid confusion when you’re going to install the business version of Teams) had some holes. Rather than edit that post, I figured it’s best to just start from scratch. First, let’s review. Why are there two versions of Teams? That’s a…

  • Send MDM commands without an MDM service using PowerShell

    Sometimes you run into something completely by accident; other times, it’s more of a building process based on work that you’ve done in the past. In this case, it’s a combination of the two. While researching some MDM-related “stuff,” I came across a DLL named “mdmlocalmanagement.dll” and the file name got my interest, so I…

  • How many ways are there to manage Autopilot devices and profiles?

    Working on presentations frequently makes me revisit past stuff. And in this case, that “past stuff” predates my involvement with Windows Autopilot (I started working on it in 2018). Let’s go back to 2017, when Windows Autopilot was first being built (technically, it was probably 2016 since it released in 2017). There wasn’t yet any…

  • M1 Mac virtualization revisited: Parallels Desktop 18 vs. VMware Fusion 22H2 Preview

    I probably own more ARM64-based machines than then typical person, and I used those somewhat regularly for testing OS deployment scenarios. Virtual machines are usually more productive for those types of activities, hence my desire to run virtual machines on my M1 Mac Mini. My blog from February compared the options available at the time.…

  • Fun with TPM firmware version numbers

    I’ve spent a lot of time looking at Autopilot log files, hardware hashes, and TPM-related “stuff.” And it’s always puzzled me why things have to be so difficult. In this case, it’s about something really simple: The TPM firmware version of a particular TPM chip/device. If you look in the TPM MMC, you see a…

  • Connect the dots: Create your own hashes

    My previous post was to figure out the format of an Autopilot (OAv3) hash. But there’s more to that intellectual exercise than the exercise itself, because I wanted to be able to create a hash myself, from scratch. When you know the format, you can “invent” your own machine. For example: And then I should…

  • Connect the dots: Reverse-engineering an Autopilot hash

    I previously posted details on breaking down an Autopilot hash (really, an OAv3 hash as these aren’t Autopilot-specific), leveraging the OA3TOOL.EXE utility in the ADK to convert the hash into a printable XML format. But how do you go from that 4000-byte (exactly) string of letters to something intelligible? With a little bit of reverse…

  • Connect the dots: Remediating the Autopilot hardware hash

    It’s a common problem: You send a PC off for repair and it comes back with a different hardware component and is no longer recognized as an Autopilot-registered device. In an attempt to help with this, Microsoft mentioned during a recent AMA that a new feature was added to Autopilot to help automate the remediation…