Ejecting the CD Drive During a Task Sequence

If you are running a task sequence from some local based media such as a CD or USB for that matter then if you are enabling BitLocker in that task sequence you would want to make sure that the device is ejected before you enable BitLocker.

Trend OfficeScan Causes Unexpected Task Sequence Failures

I have been working with a customer on a migration and consolidation project, moving from ConfigMgr 2007 and removing secondary sites for field offices and replacing them with distribution points, during this process I identified a number of task sequence issues and issues with their existing environment due to Trend OfficeScan.

Finding True Empty Collections

I recently during a migration had a need to get a list of empty collections in ConfigMgr 2007 as we were looking for areas to cleanup before starting a migration. I found a couple of PowerShell scripts already made but they didn’t do what I was looking for.

Field Note Friday #001

As part of my commitment to bringing great quality content as well as technical hints, tips and scripts. This post is the first of my field note Friday series where I will share my experiences of the past week with everything from what has got me thinking to my problem solving activities.

Introducing the Mailbag

I would like to introduce a new feature on the blog called the mailbag.

Help! My OS is Installing to D!

Those of you doing OSD with ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 may have noticed something strange happening when running your task sequences, this is that the operating system installs to the D: drive and not the C: drive. Why is this?

The Joy of File System Redirection

You have all seen it before, the option when we deploy our applications to make the application run as 32bit on a 64bit system or to disable the 64bit file redirection in a task sequence. What do these options actually do though and why does it matter?

Hiding First Setup During OSD

I have been working on a task sequence all week with a custom background showing the progress of the task sequence on different images. However when you get to the Windows setup, the black “Setup is preparing…” window comes up, if you have lots of post Windows tasks like my customer such as configuration, software installs etc then you never see your swanky background. Can we remove the background? Most certainly can.

Installing Fonts During a Task Sequence

For those who spend their time designing task sequences and trying to get that 100% zero touch process you will know what I mean when I say some things are just plain difficult to do without using the GUI. One example of this is installing fonts.

Improved SSD Detection During Task Sequences

Lots of you will be familiar with my script I posted last year to enable the detection of solid state disks during a task sequence. I have had much success by tweaking the script in different environments depending on the drive. In this post I will walk through a more reliable way to detect the presence of SSD drives in your task sequences.