Fazza

When we replaced our former SCCM server we also started from scratch. I just turned off the old server, created a new one with the same IP address and also used the same site code and boundaries. As and when a new version or upgrade/update has come out for it I've done an in place upgrade as I know it was installed properly (by me) and so far everything is fine!

You could try resetting the BIOS to see if that helps. Could be RAM also so try different RAM in the computer to see if that helps - I assume the graphics card shares the computers RAM which is why I suggested this.

We use StarTech ones. They're not the cheapest but neither are they the most expensive. With regards to drivers, this depends on the make/model of it. We have found with StarTech they work OK with WindowsPE (which is what SCCM uses). They wont boot to PXE as that's a separate chip that is normally included on your motherboard and as your tablets dont have Ethernet on them they wont have PXE built in. You need some offline way of booting to MDT etc.

Most of them that I've seen are not PXE so wont boot to MDT. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= We use SCCM to do that to our Windows Tablets that dont have Ethernet. We connect up a USB Ethernet 'dongle' and a USB CD-ROM with a bootable SCCM disc in it. We can then connect to a Task Sequence and image them across the network. I know you mention MDT (and not SCCM) but I thought I post this in case someone knows of a similar way of doing what we do but with MDT instead. Third party, no. Windows, yes! In the past we have used Windows Image Backup (Windows 7 Backup is another name for it) and backed up a tablet with all the software on to a USB hard disk and then done a restore on the remaining tablets. You can copy the backup to multiple USB hard disks to make it a bit quicker.

AMC, Misco, UK Computer Supplies, PCWorld (Business), Moon Computers, Insight, Plan IT, Total Computers - to name just a few.

I do! md "e:\users\students\user001" icacls "e:\users\students\user001" /grant "user001":(OI)(CI)M No idea how to get it to look up the username from an excel spreadsheet though.

I know you can use the icacls command to set permissions via a command prompt so you must be able to script it by using a text file full of the usernames and then create a batch file to look up a name one at a time from the file, create a folder and then use the icacls command to apply the permissions. No idea how I'm afraid but it might give some other person an idea how to do it.

SCCM is one of the best things I have ever installed! It's great for creating/deploying images via PXE! Here's what I do: Create a 'Golden Image' on a VM that is in a Workgroup and the local admin password is blank Run a Manual Capture to automatically create and upload the 'Golden Image' to the SCCM Server Add the 'Golden Image' to SCCM Create Packages of the relevant drivers Create a Task Sequence to deploy the 'Golden Image' and Packaged Drivers Boot to PXE on a Client PC and install the 'Golden Image'! It's as fast as it takes to install all the software that is part of our Golden Image and pretty much everything else it automatic!

Sorry for the double-posting but I've just gotten this message on my test PC when upgrading from Windows 10 1511 to 1607.1 "all the existing data on your computer will be removed" - is this a generic message or is this 'upgrade' going to remove all files and programs and just leave Windows 10 1607.1 on my test computer?

Thanks for all the replies. What I've decided to do is create a Task Sequence that I shall make available to all Windows 10 computers that are not on the current Windows 10 Build (no point in offering to upgrade to the same version and build number)! We've created a Device Collection in SCCM that has all the Windows 10 computers in it that have a build number that is less than the current build (14393) and made it Available to them so they can upgrade via the Software Center should they so wish. People wont see much of a difference between 1507/1511 and 1607 but with the new Creators Update on its way soon that's when I think we'll see a lot of people enquiring about it so getting prepared for it now! I think we'll be the main users of this option as if people bring in their laptops for repair or issues etc. and are leaving their Windows 10 laptop with us then we'll do the upgrade as a matter of course.

For me the problem is I don't trust the upgrade process 100% on some of our older computers that we've put Windows 10 on so I'd rather give them the choice rather than force it upon then! It would also make it easier for us to semi-automatically upgrade when we have a laptop in for repair/upgrade/anything we can quickly upgrade them ourselves. How do you perform an upgrade via a TS as I've only ever done a fresh install/image? Thanks.

We've got quite a few Windows 10 Staff Laptop around the place now, so I need to start looking in to how to upgrade them when future releases of Windows 10 come along. We have SCCM which I see has a Windows 10 Servicing option - I'm assuming this is what is used to deploy new versions of Windows 10 out to clients? What I'd like to do is when a new version of Windows 10 comes out (such as the new Creators Update) is make it available to anyone via SCCM so it doesn't get forced out but users can choose to upgrade should they wish via the Software Center etc. - is this possible? Thanks.

I dont know anything about FOG but I do know (from personal experience) that by default the local administrator account is disabled and when you run sysprep it basically defaults the OS so the local administrator account is disabled once sysprep has finished working. Someone has implied that you need to add a user to your answer file so try that next and see if that works.

Me neither - unless I've missed something? Have they said that they are not longer supporting or manufacturing or selling Ruckus kit as the way I've read it is that a different company now owns Ruckus?

No, this was several years ago and shortly afterwards Microsoft removed them from Windows Updates so they were literally only available for a few days after they were released so if this issue has only just happened after recent updates then it wont be the same ones we have. How many updates have been installed recently on the affected computers? Sort them by date in Programs and Features and see.

In the new version is there a way of removing the Join Pin Group icon from client machines as with the current version even if you turn it off it still displays on the client machines?

We had something like this a few years ago and you have to work out what update caused it and then uninstall it from all your computers. What we had to do was find a machine (or replicate the issue on a spare/test PC) and then uninstall one update at a time until the problem goes away (making sure to make a note of the KB number of each update we uninstalled) once you know which update caused the issue, uninstall it on another PC with the issue to confirm its just the one update (it could be two updates together that cause the issue).

I tried for a few weeks of getting them to inject properly and then I wondered if you could treat a Driver install program as a 'Program' in SCCM (assuming there is a silent install option available) and it worked! I then stopped messing about trying to get the injected drivers to work (I even used DoubleDriver to extract already installed drivers but to no avail) and just installed the drivers with a silent install! One thing to remember is that on some obscure drivers, the silent install option is not always clear, Google the name of your driver along with 'silent install' or go to the manufacturers website and search there in the installation documentation.

Work out an hourly rate and use this to calculate your daily and half-daily rate. All you need to do then is work out how much time you're going to need to set it all up and that will give you your answer. If they havent worked out what they want you to do yet then giving them your daily rate will help them judge if it's feasible for them or not. I guess it all depends on who you're doing this for, is it a 'private job' or via your School/Academy? A typical daily rate for an engineer at the moment seems to be around £800 a day! If you were to charge £30 an hour (x8) would give you a daily rate of £240 which is a lot less but a nice little earner for you or your School/Academy!

I've worked in both the public and private sectors and in my experience the experience you get working in Education is a hell of a lot wider than if you work for a company which in my experience tend to have a hierarchical structure where you are either 1st line support, 2nd line support or infrastructure support etc. whereas in Education you tend to be all 3 of those things as well as a hole other bunch of roles too! If you're going from Education to working for a company then you'll have a wide set of skills that they can take advantage of. Depending on the School/College/University you work for, you may not be used to the expectations a company will have - for example if the print server stopped working at our place it's not exactly the end of the world (unless it's exam portfolio time that is) so we'd probably go home normal time and begin work again on it in the morning. For a company, time is money and if no one can print things out this could potentially cost the company money whilst they wait for you to fix it, so it would be kind of expected that you stay behind for a bit until you fix it thus saving the company from losing too much money.

I might have misunderstood 'Server 4' then as the way it's written it sounded to me like a backup file and print server rather than a backup server for backing up the file and print server on - that's why I suggested Replication.

lol - if only it was as simple as that! There's no standard in switches for installing silently - at least not in my experience! Even drivers from the same manufacturer use variations! In the above screen grab you can see the Intel Chipset Driver for a Lenovo B50-80 uses the -s -norestart switches. I always look for a 'no restart' option as I dont like the idea of a driver doing that during a task sequence. What I do is open up a command prompt, browse to the drivers and look for the install program and then put -? or /? or -h or /h as a parameter and see if that brings up a list of the switches you can use with it. For example with the above Chipset Driver for the Lenovo B50-80 the install file is called SetupChipset so at the command prompt I put SetupChipset.exe /? and it brings this up: Sometimes the parameter is /qn where the qn=quiet with no dialog boxes and another parameter could be -norestart to stop it restarting. In the above screen grab you can see that the BlueTooth driver for this particular laptop has different switches to the Chipset. When it comes to parameters like this some drivers dont have a lot of error protection built in and expect the parameters to be entered in the case shown in the Help dialog bog in the order they appear. In the above example -s comes before -norestart so if you decide to put SetupChipset.exe -norestart -s or capitalise the -S then it may not work. So if in the help box it says -S then use a capital as the a lowercase -s may not work. Here's an example of one of my Task Sequences: As you can see I've put the drivers after .Net has been installed and before any additional software gets installed. Hope that all makes sense! I then add the Program to the task sequence and it installs them for me/us!

The 5 servers you have listed is basically what would have been done if you were using Server 2003 on physical machines 'back in the day'. Nowadays with the arrival of Virtual Machines you tend to split the roles out in to individual servers so it would look something like this: Server 1: Domain Controller 1 Roles - AD, DHCP, DNS Server 2: Domain Conroller 2 Roles - AD, DHCP, DNS (failover server) Server 3: File server Server 4: Print server Server 5: Remote desktop server Server 6: Roles - SCCM (WSUS is controlled by SCCM on an SCCM server and must only be installed and not configured as SCCM takes over that bit) No need for a 'backup' file and Print server as if you want a backup of any of your servers you'll need to use Replication on another Physical server with Hyper-V on it so in the event of one of you replicated servers failing, you can failover to the replicated servers.

The 5 servers you have listed is basically what would have been done if you were using Server 2003 on physical machines 'back in the day'. Nowadays with the arrival of Virtual Machines you tend to split the roles out in to individual servers so it would look something like this: Server 1: Domain Controller 1 Roles - AD, DHCP, DNS Server 2: Domain Conroller 2 Roles - AD, DHCP, DNS (failover server) Server 3: File server Server 4: Print server Server 5: Remote desktop server Server 6: Roles - SCCM (WSUS is controlled by SCCM on an SCCM server and must only be installed and not configured as SCCM takes over that bit) No need for a 'backup' file and Print server as if you want a backup of any of your servers you'll need to use Replication on another Physical server with Hyper-V on it so in the event of one of you replicated servers failing, you can failover to the replicated servers.

I had the same issue when I first started using SCCM (no idea if the later versions change this) so I now install all the drivers using a Silent Install switch by adding it to SCCM as a Program and then adding it to the Task Sequence - that way the chipset gets installed (dont think you can get that via Microsoft Updates) along with all the other drivers! I've been doing this for years now and the drivers always install properly without any issues!