Restart SCCM OSD Task Sequence within Windows PE

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If you want to restart SCCM OSD Task Sequence from within Windows PE without having to reboot the machine and start the PXE boot sequence again, you can quickly press F8 to bring up a command prompt and enter the following command: x:smsbini386TsmBootstrap.exe /env:WinPE /configpath:x:smsdata This will then restart the task sequence process for you … Read more

SCCM Collection based on Active Directory Organisation Unit (OU) Membership

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You may want to create a Configuration Manager Collection based upon an Active Directory Organisation Unit. To do this you can use the following WQL code and then simply amend the last part to be the Organisation Unit that you want to base the Collection on: SELECT SMS_R_USER.ResourceID, SMS_R_USER.ResourceType, SMS_R_USER.Name, SMS_R_USER.UniqueUserName, SMS_R_USER.WindowsNTDomain FROM SMS_R_User WHERE … Read more

Show Distribution Point in use during Task Sequence

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We recently came across issues where our Configuration Manager Operating System Deployments (OSD) where running extremely slowly and we could not figure out why. After some investigation, we found out that one of our remote Distribution Points (DP) was not working correctly and that rebuilds on one of the sites where actually pulling the image … Read more

SQL Reporting Services Error – Maximum request length exceeded

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When running or trying to create a large report in SSRS, you may come across an error stating the below: Error 2: There was an exception running the extensions specified in the config file. Maximum request length exceeded. It took us a while to figure this one out but it is actually very simple. After … Read more

Configuration Manager – How to Change the Approve/Deny Status of an Application Catalog Request

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If you are a Configuration Manager administrator, the chances are that you are using the Application Catalog to allow users to install their own software.A great feature of this is that you can put in specialist or licensed software and add a “Request” button. This means that your end users will only get the software … Read more

SCCM Query – Report on Distribution Point Statuses

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In Configuration Manager 2012, there is a section under the Monitoring ribbon called Distribution Status. This will give you a lot of information about your distributions and your distribution points. If you look at Distribution Point Configuration Status, this gives you a good understanding of whether your drivers, packages, applications and images have deployed correctly … Read more

SCCM – Report on Outlook Archive PST files on Devices

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If you want to report on machines that have Outlook archive (PST’s) on them, where they are and how big they are, then you can use this guide to create a report that will do this for you using Configuration Manager. First of all, you will need to tell your Software Inventory to look for … Read more

SCCM – WQL Query for Devices with Configuration Manager Client Installed and no System Center Endpoint Protection Installed

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We have had a report that one of our WQL queries has not been working correctly, this is the one for devices that have Configuration Manager client installed but do not have System Center Endpoint Protection installed on them. The original post is here: WQL Query for Devices without Endpoint Installed So, we have looked … Read more

Failed to validate content hash on ConfigMgr Distribution Points after Content Validation

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We have recently had problems with our global distribution points in ConfigMgr after the monthly content validation has happened. On some of our distribution points (not all) we are getting and error stating: “Failed to validate content hash” With our monitoring on the Distribution Point Configuration Status looking like this (click the thumbnails for the … Read more