In-depth guides for Microsoft System Center products including SCCM/ConfigMgr, SCOM, SCVMM, and Orchestrator. Written for IT professionals.
If you have a Configuration Manager client that is not working correctly, the tell-tale signs are missing tabs, missing selections under the Actions tab, and incorrect or missing information on the General tab. Standard fixes like ccmsetup.exe /uninstall often fail to fully clean the client — leaving behind WMI corruptions and registry entries that cause … Read more
We were running through our list of servers and looking at what each one was doing in terms of Domain Controllers, Exchange servers, SQL servers, System Center servers etc when we noticed that we had quite a few servers that were using pretty small databases but had a large amount of host resource allocated to … Read more
We recently helped out with a data migration which included creating a completely new set of Active Directory security groups. They wanted all the members to have the same level of access but wanted all the new security groups to have a matching standard. So we needed to create all the new security groups and … Read more
We were asked recently about how to use a SCCM package to amend current user registry keys (HCU). To be honest, we didn’t really know, HCU registry changes have always been a bit of a nightmare to manage. However, we started to have a look around and found an excellent guide on how to carry … Read more
CMTrace is an awesome tool and I have been copying it onto an end users machine using a batch file during the OSD process for years. But finally, Microsoft have added it into the Configuration Manager Client installation. So, once you have an up to date client installed on a users machine, you can browse … Read more
We came across a problem with our SCCM OSD recently where it was getting through approximately half the build process and then seemingly getting stuck on “Just a moment…” before timing out and not completing the build. This was a bit of a head scratcher as there did not seem to be any crash or … Read more
We recently had a problem with our Service Manager database server using massively high RAM usage. It was using up all the RAM we gave it no matter how much extra we allocated to it. So we needed to try and figure out why it was doing this, like all good IT people, we started … Read more
As a SCCM administrator you are probably fully aware that you have a lot of power available to you when carrying out deployments using task sequences. But you can add even more options to SCCM task sequences by adding Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) integration. This gives you a load more options during a task sequence … Read more
When using Configuration Manager, you may find that some things may not work fully if you are also behind a web security proxy service. We came across this problem recently where the Asset Intelligence Point was being blocked from contacting the internet due to web security. This caused this error in our Configuration Manager Console: … Read more
If you want your end user experience to show them the progress of an installation from your Software Center, then you will need to ensure that you have your command lines and user experience tab setup correctly. We have seen many people follow the “install in the background and don’t tell anyone the progress” method … Read more
If you are looking at setting up a SCCM user collection based on membership of an Active Directory Security Group, then you can use this WQL query for the collection. WQL Script To set this up, create a new collection and copy and paste this as its query: Variables You can add or remove any … Read more
We recently built a new Configuration Manager system for a client who wanted user collections for all departments and companies within their corporate group. We were going to set these up manually which is a fairly simple, but time consuming, job to do. But this was a time restricted installation so we had a quick … Read more