This category contains Windows Server tutorials and guides covering installation, configuration, and troubleshooting across multiple versions including 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025. Designed for system administrators and IT professionals managing server environments.
If you are using Windows 2012 R2 Core or if you just like using Powershell, then you may want to know how to enable Remote Desktop. To do this, you should go into your Core server where you should see a command box. In here, type in Powershell and press enter. This will open up … Read more
We recently have had issues with our Windows 7 operating system deployments seemingly not completing fully. We were getting the following issues: The ConfigMgr client was not fully installed – it was displaying the Site Mode as “Unknown” The ConfigMgr client was not picking up a certificate – it was displaying as “None” The _SMSTaskSequence … Read more
If you want to report on the machines that do not have the ConfigMgr client installed within your Configuration Manager environment then you can run this query directly on your SQL database or you can use it to create a report within SSRS. The query is below and can be altered to fit your own … Read more
Sorry about the recent lack of updates on our site but we have been incredibly busy fixing “real world” IT issues! Its also the silly season for holidays so over the next month updates may be a little sparse but we will try our best! We recently came across a really good blog post by Daniel … Read more
We had reports from a customer this week about strange issues with their Configuration Manager OSD Task Sequences failing. The OSD seemed to work on most machines but a new batch of refurbished laptops would PXE boot but then would fail after the task sequence had been selected with a generic Microsoft error (you know … Read more
You may have noticed that if you get an error when deploying an image using OSD in Configuration Manager the machine will display that error for 15 minutes and then reboot the machine. If you are running an image at lunch break or even overnight, this is obviously not even time to get the log … Read more
With the recent release of Dell’s new laptop ranges, Configuration Manager OSD professionals face new challenges. We recently had issues with some of Dell’s new laptops not picking up the network after PXE boot even though we had gone through the normal process of adding the network card drivers to the boot image and ensuring … Read more
We have recently been tasked with fixing a problem with Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 and deploying a fat Windows XP wim image to a Dell Latitude E5510 with the newer generation of Intel processors, in this case the processor was an Intel i3 Processor. The problem was this, the customer had a fat Windows XP … Read more
If you are building a Configuration Manager 2012 server there are a number of pre-requisites that have to be installed for it to work correctly. It can be quite time consuming installing all of the server features that are required so to help with this process, you can run Powershell cmdlets that will take care … Read more
If you are using SCCM for Operating System Deployment (OSD) – which is one of the main functions of the system so we will assume that you are – then you may want to monitor the process of your task sequences. To do this, you should go into your Configuration Manager Console and click on … Read more
Although most people will be using full versions of Windows Server 2012 products by now, some may still use the evaluation VHDs from Microsoft. We have just downloaded all 11GB of VHD files from Microsoft for doing some testing and got to the point where we need to enter the Contoso Administrator password. After trying … Read more
Dell have an excellent tool freely available called Dell Client Integration Pack. Included in this tool is something called Warranty Status. What this part of the tool does is looks at your SCCM SQL database for Dell machines and their asset tags, then checks against its own warranty database for the warranty information. It then inserts … Read more