Browse practical Windows guides, tutorials, and troubleshooting tips covering Windows 10 and Windows 11. This category includes step-by-step fixes, optimisation techniques, and how-to content for everyday users, IT professionals, and home lab enthusiasts.
If you wish to play God with your Windows operating system and have the ability to change virtually every setting on your machine in one easy to access window – then this little tool is for you. Simply download the installer, install on your Windows machine and you will gain full access to all the … Read more
If you are having trouble in getting the Dot.Net 3 feature to enable on your Windows 8 machine, there is a way that you can do this offline by using DISM and the original Windows 8 media. Instructions Firstly, you sure ensure that you have your original Windows 8 media in your optical drive (or … Read more
If you are trying to run Windows Update on a Windows XP machine, you may find that you are getting errors or that it gets stuck in a “Searching for updates” process. This may be that your Windows XP machine has not fully updated its own Windows Update Agent. To fix this, you should first … Read more
I have been asked to provide a solution to a situation where during SCCM OSD, they want to run Windows Updates across multiple sites worldwide using the local WSUS replica servers. So as an example, the main Headquarters office is in New York with the main WSUS server and then in Rome there is another … Read more
If you have been frustrated like many other IT professionals at the ever growing size of the WinSXS folder and having absolutely no choice but to not touch it, then you will be delighted to know that Microsoft have finally released an update that allows you to clear this folder and free up huge amounts … Read more
If you are using Microsoft DaRT 8 to enable you to be able to remote onto machines that are in WinPE during an OSD, then you will find that if you are using an operating system other than Windows 8 or above, you will struggle to install the DaRT Remote Viewer tool. To get around … Read more
I’ve recently been working on a project using WDS and MDT rather than SCCM and I needed to create some new custom images to deploy to around 200 machines. These consisted of Windows XP, Windows 7 Enterprise x86 and x64. Once I had created the custom image, I needed to then capture it using Sysprep … Read more
I’ve recently been trying to create a custom built Windows 8 image for future deployment using SCCM 2012 SP1. I built a clean Windows 8 base image and then installed all the programs that I wanted on the image and then run Windows Update. I made some changes to the Metro front screen and updated, … Read more
I’ve recently had a situation where I needed to install Windows Updates as part of the OSD process. However, the updates had to be run directly from the local WSUS server rather than from SCCM built in software updates solution. To do this, all you need to do is to install and integrate MDT. Once … Read more
I’ve been working for Windows language pack lately, particularly in the OSD part of SCCM. So part of that is knowing what the language pack codes are for various languages. The Windows language pack codes are very useful for dictating which language packs get installed during the deployment phase of your task sequence. 2024 Update … Read more
I thought it was time I started to test Windows 8, I’ll keep my opinions to myself on it for now but one of the many things that does not seem to work very well on it is the Windows Activation. Every time I tried to activate Windows it failed and I couldn’t find a … Read more
This guide will show you what you need to do to capture a Windows XP Service Pack 3 image, which you can then capture and deploy using Configuration Manager.First of all, you need to create a full image that is ready to be captured. This is usually best to install on a virtual machine using … Read more