Joffer's Notepad

I found this blogpost about MDT 2013 and handling drivers.. I might have to check it out later in a lab environment. In MDT 2013 (Lite Touch), there are two types of drivers to worry about when deploying Windows. There are drivers for Windows PE 5.0 (the boot image) and there are drivers for the Windows Operating System that you deploy.   Driver management for the boot image is pretty straight , but driver management for the Operating Systems that you deploy is more complex. The real answer is it depends… To simplify I have broken down drivers for the Windows Operating system in to three core scenarios (see later in this post). But first, let’s start with the boot image drivers. Link: http://deploymentresearch.com/Research/Post/325/MDT-2013-Lite-Touch-Driver-Management

This is a interesting and describing forum post about Lenovo putting some Lenovo CrapWare in the UEFI BIOS which Windows will execute upon login (right before actually): http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=29497693&sid=ddf3e32512932172454de515091db014 Lenovo has issued a fix: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/lse_bios_notebook and an article: http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=2013

This post was originally stored as a draft I never finished on how to update Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 Update 1 with the least amount of downloads (and time). Before I got around to publish it, Windows 10 was released. So now it will take you all the way from Windows 8 through Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. As many of you know, Microsoft has released Windows 10 as a free upgrade if you have a legal Windows 7 or 8.x installation, as long as you upgrade during the first year (so by 29th of July 2016). To upgrade Windows 8 to Windows 10 you have to first upgrade to Windows 8.1. So lets get cracking. I assume you have a clean new Windows 8 ("Home" or Pro) installed. Shortest path to upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 First, activate Windows 8. Then configure Windows Update to "Let me decide which updates to download and install" Check for Windows 8 updates. Windows will want to update the Windows Update Component itself. Update it. Install the only update you n...

This might work in previous versions of Windows, but I've only tried it in Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. I've got a MFP (multi-function printer) from Dell that I use to scan directly to a shared folder on my computer. For this I use a seperate user that has share/write permissions on a shared folder. I don't want to show this user in the Windows 10 list, so here is how to hide it: Start regedit and navigate here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon Create a new sub-KEY under Winlogon named ' SpecialAccounts ' Create a new sub-KEY under SpecialAccounts named ' UserList ' In UserList, create a DWORD (32-bit) and give it the name of the user account. Leave the value at 0. Log out or Reboot Update: Verified to work in Windows 10.

Ever since I experienced many of the problems of enabling (installing) .NET Framework 3.5 feature via Windows Update on Windows 8.x days or even weeks or month after my initial Windows installation I'v I've been quick to make that the first thing I install on a new clean Windows 8.x installation. In my experience you will still "always" need .NET 2.0 or 3.5 (.NET Framework 3.5 feature set in Windows 8.x includes 3.0 and 2.0 also), so now I always install it righ away. Most of the solutions on the internet tells you to grab the DVD/Mount ISO and point the ' dism.exe ' to the SXS folder and enable it with the source files there. For a lot of us, those files aren't available when you need it, or not at all. I just had this problem hit me again, as I just started a new consultancy assignment and got a new laptop from the work place I had to use. It came already installed with Windows 8.1 (over the network) and with all software and updates. Hence, enabli...

Christophe Calvet aka The Crazy Consultant (blog) ( link ) has written some crazy woop ass 407 cmdlets (as of writing) and is sharing it with us at his blog - http://thecrazyconsultant.com/get-esxcli_on_steroids/ I would also recommend reading the  Howto use ESXCLI in PowerCLI by Florian Grehl ( www.virten.net )

I was just surfing about and was reading about PernixData releaseing FVP v2.5 in a blog , and my attention was directed to a great 6-part article about Server memory architecture, UMA, NUMA, memory subsystems, DDR4 and how to optimize memory for performance by Frank Denneman - you'll find it here:  http://frankdenneman.nl/2015/02/18/memory-configuration-scalability-blog-series/

Start these with  run  (from start menu) or run it from a command prompt. Admin Applet Command AD Domains and Trusts domain.msc Active Directory Management admgmt.msc AD Sites and Services dssite.msc AD Users and Computers dsa.msc ADSI Edit adsiedit.msc Authorization manager azman.msc Certification Authority Management certsrv.msc Certificate Templates certtmpl.msc Cluster Administrator cluadmin.exe Computer Management compmgmt.msc Component Services comexp.msc Configure Your Server cys.exe Device Manager devmgmt.msc DHCP Management dhcpmgmt.msc Disk Defragmenter dfrg.msc Disk Manager diskmgmt.msc Distributed File System dfsgui.msc DNS Management dnsmgmt.msc Event Viewer eventvwr.msc Indexing Service Management ciadv.msc IP Address Ma...

Just found a great blogpage that keeps an overview over SQL version, updates, builds etc. Check it out here: http://sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.no/ Short cuts for some useful articles, as this blogpage lists: How to identify your SQL Server version and edition SQL Server Internal Database Versions Microsoft SQL Server Support Lifecycle Microsoft SQL Server Home Microsoft SQL Server Developer Center Microsoft TechNet: Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Knowledge Base Sqlservr.exe versions

I just came over this page  that has good info about windows (vista/7/8/2008/2012/..) boot record problem solving.