Task Sequence

Deploying Windows 8 and Customizing the Lock Screen with ConfigMgr 2012

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This week my post will be about the deployment of Windows 8 and then with a customized lock screen. One of the main complaints about a customized deployment of Windows 8 was that it wasn’t possible to set a customized lock screen without using unsupported methods of “hacking” file permissions and replacing the pictures. This has changed since the cumulative update of November for Windows 8 (see also here). One of the nice adjustments with this cumulative update is that it enables enterprise customers to customize the default lock screen. This setting is introduced as a Group Policy –setting, named Force a specific default lock screen image. In this post I’m not going to use the Group Policy –setting, but only the corresponding registry value …

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Deploying Windows 8 including Optional Windows Features with ConfigMgr 2012

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This week my post will be about the deployment about the deployment of Windows 8 and then including optional Windows features. I already did a post like this about Windows Server 2012, and the methods are similar, but I’m still getting, and seeing, lots of questions about how it works for Windows 8. So what I really want to show in this post are the different options for deploying Windows 8 including some random Optional Windows Feature(s). The three most used options for this are DISM, Powershell and MDT. Well, actually, to be really correct, there is only one option to install Features in Windows 8 and that’s DISM. Both, Powershell and MDT are just different methods for calling DISM actions. In the rest of …

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Tweeting the deployment status of a system via Orchestrator and ConfigMgr 2012

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Only a few days before Christmas I thought it would be fun to just create something extra cool for this weeks blog post. I thought about something that would be different, but also useful in some way. So I started thinking about how I would like to get my deployment status messages, as I like to start my deployments without checking them al the time, and I came to Twitter. I’ve got my tweets everywhere, on my phone, my tablet, my laptop, etc. So wouldn’t it be cool to get the deployment status messages on twitter? Prerequisites Now I decided that I want to show how to tweet the deployment status of a task sequence, there are two methods to do that and I will …

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New and Improved: Pre-provision user applications during OS deployment via Orchestrator and ConfigMgr 2012

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Last week I did a post about pre-provisioning user applications, based on group membership, during OS deployment, which I already thought was pretty cool. I got some nice positive feedback on that post, including a comment of my very well respected colleague and ConfigMgr MVP Kim Oppalfens. He said, “Nice find, but what if you have twenty applications?”. Well, my idea of last week would mean two task sequence steps per applications, so that’s not really an option for a lot of applications… I had to come up with something better. The biggest challenge about this is that Orchestrator can only return static variables, it’s not possible to return dynamically named variables from a runbook. This meant that the only option left, to really achieve …

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Pre-provision user applications, based on group membership, during OS deployment via Orchestrator and ConfigMgr 2012

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This week it’s time for another, in my opinion, very cool post with the combination of Orchestrator and ConfigMgr 2012 (and MDT 2012 Update 1). In this post I want to use the user, set with User Device Affinity, to pre-provision applications, based on group membership, on a device during the initial deployment of the device. Out-of-the-box User Device Affinity can be used to pre-deploy user-targeted application to a device and it can be set during the deployment of a device. This way it will start receiving applications very quick after the deployment. Basically I’m going to show in this post how to set User Device Affinity via a task sequence and how to use that username to install only specific applications for that user …

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Deploying Windows 8 with the UE-V 1.0 Agent via ConfigMgr 2012

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This week I will do a post about deploying the recent released UE-V 1.0 Agent. Even though there is a great guide, named UE-V Deployment Guide, included with the installation files, I noticed that there is a small piece “missing” for a deployment, with Windows 8, via a task sequence. When I just added the agent to my task sequence, to deploy Windows 8, I noticed that the agent wasn’t installing during the deployment. After looking at the Installation log file and after running the installer on a clean system, I saw that the Offline Files Service (CscService) needs to be running before the installation will run (see screenshot). It seems that the Offline Files Service on Windows 8, by default, is set to Automatic …

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How to perform an action directly after the task sequence is finished with ConfigMgr 2012

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Last week I already did a post about a new task sequence variable and this week my post will be about another new task sequence variable. This one will probably be used a little less, but can be very useful in some specific situations. Think about situations where an action needs to be performed directly after the task sequence is finished, without impacting the status of the task sequence. In this post I will use a situation where I want the machine to shutdown at the end of the task sequence, as an example. Configuration Just like last week, the configuration is actually very easy and it’s just more about knowing that the task sequence variable exists. This is another new task sequence variable in …

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

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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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Reporting about all the different OS Deployment Versions with ConfigMgr 2012

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One of the biggest challenges with OS Deployment is keeping track of all the different deployments and everything that changed between the deployments. This post will focus on the first part, keeping track of all the different deployments. I will do that by showing a way to write information to the registry, creating a hardware inventory for those registry keys and building a report on the inventory data. For the second part, keeping track of all the changes, take a look at this great post of Maik Koster. Create registry keys The first thing is to create a script that will write information about the deployment to the registry. As a deployment is much more then just the image, we need information about the task …

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

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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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