In-depth guides for Microsoft System Center products including SCCM/ConfigMgr, SCOM, SCVMM, and Orchestrator. Written for IT professionals.
I recently have had some issues with machines not PXE booting for me to be able to deploy an image to new machines. I couldn’t quite figure it out as all of our worldwide sites were working perfectly and the office I was working at was also working in one part of the building but … Read more
We recently expanded SCCM Console access to a number of additional users. Before access was granted, each user completed a short training session, and their SCCM permissions were heavily restricted as expected. However, several machines began displaying an error when launching the SCCM Console: Cannot connect to the SCCM database If you’re an SCCM administrator, … Read more
As stated in my previous post, I have been asked recently about installing Endpoint Protection (SCEP) during the SCCM OSD process. This is pretty easy to do and the knock on affect is that you also can have SCEP available to install from your Software Catalog. To prepare the SCEP software for deployment in your … Read more
]I’ve had a few requests recently asking whether it is possible to install System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) during the task sequence for an operating system deployment. I’ve also been asked if it is possible to put SCEP into the Software Catalog. Well, the answer to both questions is yes and I’ll be breaking the … Read more
If you have a Software Center in your SCCM environment, you will want it to look as professional as possible. There are a number of ways to do this, one is to add your corporate name, setup your customise colours, but to top it all off, you can add an icon to each application. There … Read more
I had been given a task to build a Software Catalog application where Outlook must be closed to allow the successful installation of the software. We had previously just packaged the software and made it available to the Software Catalog with a message stating that users must first shut down Outlook before attempting to run … Read more
I have been working on a method to send our helpdesk an email notification when an OSD task sequence has completed. I started by looking into using the Status Filters and Powershell but this didn’t seem to work well enough for what I wanted to do, which was to create a fancy looking email by … Read more
I’ve recently started to use Orchestrator in our live environment to conduct a number of actions but mainly to solve the issue of lack of email alerts within Configuration Manager. At the moment, we are not using Service Manager so finding an alternative to what that offers has become a task of mine. Using Orchestrator … Read more
I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the various ways of using queries and there are almost no limits to what you can do with a query and of course, you can then go on and use these queries for creating collections or just to supply you with the information you require. I have … Read more
If you are looking for a query that will display all machines and their last logged on user, the below will do this for you without any prompts. This allows you to search on the data to find what you would like across the information provided by the query. The query below is the full … Read more
We have been asked on a number of occasions how to create Configuration Manager Collections for machines on x86 or x64 Windows Operating Systems. To do this, you should use the two collection queries as below: Instructions Query to create collection for x86 machines Query to create collection for x64 machines More Queries Our full … Read more
In previous blog posts I’ve put together a guide to automatically create the computer name in your OSD task sequences using MDT (see the link below..): Automatically generate computer name during SCCM OSD However, there is also a slightly more manual way of inputting your computer name during an OSD TS using a pop-up prompt. … Read more