Add GImagex to Your WinPE Environment

Scenario

You have a WinPE boot drive with imagex on it, but you want to add GImageX to your WinPE environment so that you have a GUI front end for your WinPE boot drive.  Mostly likely because you are tired of entering the imagex commands manually.

If you want to know how to create the WinPE USB drive, please view this article.

Create Basic WinPE USB Drive - Windows 10

Scenario

You want to create a basic (no frills) bootable drive with WinPE on it.  In this case we will be using the Windows 10 ADK tools.

What you will need:

• Windows 10 ADK - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/dn913721.aspx
• USB Drive
• DISM GUI (Optional) - https://dismgui.codeplex.com/

Expand Values in SCCM Query Builder Values Box

Scenario

You are building or editing a query in SCCM 2012 R2. When you go to edit your query statement, you go to set your criterion properties and select a value.

Step by Step Setup of MDT 2013 Update 2 Server

SCENARIO

You want a quick walk through on how to setup MDT 2013 Update 2 so that you can get started using it in your environment.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

1. A server OS - Server 2008 R2 or higher.  We will be using Server 2012 R2 in this scenario.
2. Windows Deployment Services role installed on our server.
3. Download MDT 2013 Update 2. You can find it here.
4. Download Windows ADK for Windows 10. You can find that here.
5. Client OS (Win7, Win8, Win10) - whatever you plan on deploying.
6. Drivers for the machines you are deploying to.

Driver Packs

Manufactures make driver packs for their various models.  Use these!!!

HP x64 Drivers - http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x64.html

HP x86 Drivers - http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_Driverpack_Matrix_x86.html

HP WinPE Drivers - http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_WinPE_DriverPack.html

Dell Drivers - http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/enterprise-client/w/wiki/2065.dell-command-deploy-driver-packs-for-enterprise-client-os-deployment

Lenovo Drivers - https://support.lenovo.com/cy/en/documents/ht074984

Break shared service into it's own process

SCENARIO: You are troubleshooting an issue and find that the problem is related to service that is shared.  For example, say you identify a specific svchost process that is causing high CPU and you think you have identified one of the services running in that svchost as the culprit and you want to isolate it so that you can get a dump of that process.  Here is a way to do that.

PowerShell Performance Diagnostics Utility

SCENARIO: You want to be able to create, start, stop, and delete Performance Monitor data collector sets and collect logs from your computer using a menu.  You can do all of these things manually, but this script will present you with a menu for performing these tasks.

NOTE: This will work in Windows 10.  If you are running on an older version of PowerShell, you will need to change Get-CimInstance cmdlet along with the Get-GPResultantSetOfPolicy cmdlet.

UPDATE: 11-06-2017 - I just pasted a newer version of this script below.

Click Here to Download Script: Data Collection Utility

Folder Structure:

Powershell Script: Copy files from multiple source directories

While you can create a package or application that copies config files out to your clients after an install, there may be times when it's easier to just use a PowerShell script to copy configuration files to your client machines.

This was true in our case where we had to copy files from different source directories depending on the name of the computer.  In our case, we had to copy a different configuration file to C:\Program Files (x86)\application\ depending on which site that computer was at.  Our computers have a four digit site identifier at the beginning so we leveraged this in order to do the file copy.

You can modify the script to accommodate your computer name scheme.

Force Mozilla Firefox to "Always Activate" Java

Scenario

You have installed the most recent version of Java, but when you check the Add-on Manager in Mozilla Firefox, you see that the Java Plugin defaults to "Ask to Activate".  Typically you should probably leave it at "Ask to Activate" for security reasons, but if you want it to default to "Always Activate" you can do this either per user or per machine.