Conditional access and Windows 7 domain joined devices

This week is all about conditional access in combination with Windows 7 domain joined devices. I know, simple solution, migrate as fast as possible to Windows 10. Having said that, it’s not always possible to simply migrate those devices to Windows 10 and in the mean time those devices do need access to Office 365. That’s why I thought it would be good to write something about those Windows 7 domain joined devices in combination with conditional access. As Windows 7 should not be a reason to not implement conditional access. In this post I’ll provide the details about the additional configurations that need to be in place, to allow Windows 7 domain joined devices access to Office 365. So, not directly about conditional access, …

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How to apply the default install.wim of Windows 7 to C:\ with ConfigMgr 2012

It’s already known that the default install.wim of Windows 8, by default, applies to C:\, but wouldn’t it be great if there was this same functionality for Windows 7? That way there is no need for a Build and Capture task sequence anymore to maintain a thin image. Applying the default image to C:\ in combination with offline servicing of updates will do the trick. Well… I’ve got good news! In this post I will show how to apply the default install.wim of Windows 7 to C:\! Configuration The configuration is actually very easy, it’s more about knowing that it exists. ConfigMgr 2012 SP1, which is currently still in BETA, brings a set of new task sequence variables. One of these variables can be used …

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Migrating to Windows 8 by using hard-links with ConfigMgr 2012

After the release of Windows 8 last week we can already start thinking about migrating. When I’m thinking about migrations I always like the computer-refresh scenario’s where we can use hard-links. In this post I will show a basic task sequence to capture user files and settings, either offline or online, with help of hard-links. I already showed the basics of that in an earlier post last year when ConfigMgr 2012 was still in Beta. Since then the Wizard screens have not changed so I will not show that again, but  I will show some more information about what happens. Prerequisites To support migrating to Windows 8 we need ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 (which is currently still CTP) in place with at least the following packages: …

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Installing and enabling Remote Server Administration Tools with ConfigMgr 2007

It took me a while to figure out something that is actually very simple and logical… I couldn’t get the different parts of the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) enabled by command-line on Windows 7 x64… On Windows 7 x86 it’s pretty straight forward, as it can be done with the default DISM commands. But on Windows 7 x64 it is kind of hard to get it to use the correct version of DISM. This is all because the ConfigMgr client is 32-bit application and whenever a 32-bit application wants to access %windir%\System32, it will be redirected to %windir%\SysWOW64. I tried everything, even specifying the whole path to the DISM executable, but it all didn’t matter… Until I finally figured out that there is just …

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ConfigMgr 2007, Updating a Windows 7 Image with the latest Software Updates – A less conventional, but very effective way

Inspired by a previous post about the option to Schedule Updates for an already existing Operating System Image in ConfigMgr vNext, I created a little batch-file to do something similar without the GUI of ConfigMgr vNext. Of course, I do know that the ‘best practice’ for ConfigMgr 2007 is to just run another Build and Capture Task Sequence, but in some cases this can come in handy. One thing is for sure, this updates a Windows 7 Image within fifteen minutes. Background Story Now lets start with a little background story, to explain why in some situations there might be the need for this batch-file. Every month there are new Software Updates released by Microsoft. During the Software Updates Deployment the, for the organization needed, …

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User Driven OS Deployment with “Modena”

It took a while but this weekend it was finally time for some testing of, what’s code-named, “Modena”. Modena is a tool, developed by Microsoft IT, that enables the ability of an End-User Experience by using a powerful OSD Wizard. When you are searching for a way to get your users “involved” in an OS Deployment, then I would recommend you to take a look at Modena. The OSD Wizard of Modena (see picture) can be changed in a lot of different way’s. As an administrator you can select which settings can be done by a user and which are pre-set. By these customizable settings you can think about things like computername, domain, local administrators, language, time, image, backup (via USMT 4.0) and the applications. …

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Error trying to open the ConfigMgr Console

Last week I had some problems with opening the ConfigMgr Console. The weird part was that the error only appeared for one user. This was the error I got: MMC cannot open the file <driver>:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Configuration Manager\AdminUI\bin\adminconsole.msc. This may be because the file does not excist, is not an MMC console, or was created by a later version of MMC. This may also be because you do not have sufficient rights to the file. Then I figured that, because the ConfigMgr Console is a MMC snap-in, it creates a version in the user profile. Because I use Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 it is located at: <Drive>:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\MMC\adminconsole.msc. So after deleting the version from the profile and restarting the ConfigMgr Console it …

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Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 RC has been released

Today a little newsflash from the System Center Configuration Manager team. The System Center Configuration Manager team would like to announce that the following has been released and available for download: Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate. This is the official Release Candidate build for Configuration Manager 2007 SP2. New features: Refer to the SP2 Overview article posted on the primary Configuration Manager MSConnect site for all the new features and new supported configurations. Hotfixes included in SP2 article can be found on the primary Configuration Manager MSConnect page. Deployment guides for BranchCache and the new AMT features are available in the download section. The new OpsMgr07 R2 ConfigMgr07 Management Pack can also be downloaded, this supports 64bit OpsMgr client agents. Please review …

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App-V future ready???

Let’s start my first post about App-V being future ready (or not). When I was trying to deploy an App-V Sequence on a Windows 7 Client (with App-V Client 4.5 CU1) the application didn’t seem to work… At first I thouhgt it was just me, so I recreated everything from scratch, but still no luck. The next step was to search on Google and here I found a very helpfull link: http://www.softgridblog.com/?p=126. The solution is this: During the proces of making a sequence with the App-V Sequencer you get to tab Deployment. In this tab you can specify the Operating System (OS) on which this sequence can run. Before the App-V 4.5 CU1 version you didn’t have the option to select Windows 7. This means that …

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