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 […]
Prompt for time zone (and maybe other stuff) during Autopilot
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Geeking out with the UEFI boot manager
It seems like every time I need to work with UEFI, it turns into a multi-day affair involving reading spec documents and source code examples. And this time is no exception. The […]
Product Review: Apcsilmic DOT 1 Mini PC
I’ll state this up front: I’m a fan of ARM64-based PCs. They may not always be the best choice for everyone, but there are always scenarios where they make sense (whether running […]
Language pack handling in Windows 11 continues to evolve
The later Windows 10 releases were shifting to using Language Experience Packs (LXPs), which had a variety of limitations. So it wasn’t terribly surprising when Windows 11 shifted back to focusing on […]
Customizing the Windows 11 22H2 Start menu layout
When Windows 11 shipped, the Start menu wasn’t particularly flexible. One of the biggest losses was the ability to group apps into folders. With the release of Windows 11 Insider build 22557, […]
Getting rid of Widgets in Windows 11
It’s becoming a theme: things get added to Windows, IT pros want to know how to remove them. Maybe it would be better to not include them in the first place and […]
Geeking out: Offline domain join
Way back in 2009, with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7, a new feature was added called “offline domain join” (ODJ for short). Initially, the feature wasn’t understood […]
Do you properly wipe your disks (maybe following US government standards)?
This is one of those topics that I’ve been in the middle of for years. “Can you tell me how to properly wipe a disk before we dispose of or return this […]
Automatically join devices to Azure AD
It started off as a simple task: Create a provisioning package that can be used to join a device to Azure AD. But when it comes to using the Windows Configuration Designer, […]
M1 Mac virtualization: Parallels Desktop vs. VMware Fusion
2022-08-17: Feel free to read through this post and then check out the new follow-up post that compares the latest versions of Parallels and VMware Fusion. Also see this post that clarifies […]
Windows 11 includes new BCD PowerShell cmdlets
When configuring the Windows boot configuration database (BCD), we’ve always had BCDEDIT.EXE, which is a reasonable tool to use but not a lot of fun to automate, e.g. finding and removing a […]
Fixing PowerShell on Windows PE for ARM64
In past blog posts, I noted that the ADK for Windows 10 started adding ARM64 builds of Windows PE, but they were missing some key things: no HTA support, and busted .NET […]
The overhead of Edge on Windows 11 (and 10)
I noticed while looking at the WebView2 processes on Windows 11 that there was also a set of Edge processes running from the moment I logged in: I understand why that happens […]
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