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Gatt’s Ramblings.

I wont write a full on review as there are a multitude of them out there now and with news of the Release preview being only a few months away I will hang fire and consider doing one for that when I get a copy.

Impressions of Win8 at the moment are mixed. The lack of the start menu is the foremost and most obvious talking point. Needless to say I miss it, but find the Start Screen not too bad, I prefer the Live Tiles such as the Weather and Calendar useful.

Though I do feel that the use of primary colours is a major step backwards in this day and age.

After a quick update I find that whilst the mail app allows connection to Hotmail, GMail and Exchange, the lack of being able to connect to a POP3 or IMAP email account a bit frustrating.. Perhaps that will come with the RP or will be reserved exclusively for Windows Live Mail

I like the inclusion of the Ribbon with Windows Explorer

I plan to take a look “Under the hood” at some of the Group Policies and other settings such as the new Refresh / Reset over the next week and will try and post anything of any value.

If not then Win8 will probably be removed and back to Windows 7 until the RP arrives…

How do I specify the name for a new PC that has never been on the Domain?

Up until now, I’ve had the nightmare where it gets given the name MININT-and then when I rename it after SCCM shows a duplicate in the console causing most of SCCM to break (Software Distributions, Updates – the lot!)

The solution was so simple when I found it (thanks to http://sccmguy.com) :

His recommendation is to create a Collection Variable on the “Unknown Computers” collection called “OSDComputerName” with no value . The idea behind this is that OSD will then prompt you to enter a value during the deployment..

It worked a treat and now, without any messy scripts I can easily give new PCs the correct name from the word go.!!

The full post can be found here: http://sccmguy.com/2011/02/26/how-to-specify-the-computer-name-during-a-configmgr-os-deployment

My SMSTSLog file from the client was returning an error stating that it was unable to get a Certificate for it to continue

“In SSL, but with no client cert” and “sending with winhttp failed; 80072f8f. retrying.”

So after a quick google of the error in the log I came across a TechNet article that referred to importing the Root CA certificate into the Site Server:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb680501.aspx

Worked a treat and I can now start deploying to a machine…

However, I noticed that one of the workstations suddenly received a popup notifying them that it was available and was now showing in the Run Advertised Programs applet.

Now, whilst I want to be able to reimage machines, I don’t really want anyone else to be able to do this on the fly..

Thankfully the solution is simple:

In the Task Sequence Properties, click on the Advanced tab
Change the radio at the bottom from being able to run on any platform, to only specified
Then choose an OS that you don’t use (I don’t is Vista for example)

The OS Task Sequence will now be hidden from users, but still available for you to deploy via PXE

The aim was to try and find a structure that was easy to follow and maintain all the updates without much fuss. I created the usual folders for Weekly and Monthly updates which works well and makes for easily finding all the new updates to be deployed

My next task was to try and quickly find any missed updates that still needed to be deployed.

Looking at the columns in the search folders, I found 3 columns of interest:

• Installed – How many machines the specific update had been installed successfully on
• Required – How many machines an update needs to be installed on (ie missing)
• Not Required – How many machines don’t require the specific update

The column of interest is “Required” as this tells us what updates are missing from machines. Now we need to create a search folder containing only these missing updates…

When you look at the search criteria dialog you will find an option for the Required column. What’s not made clear is what you can enter in the criteria, even Microsoft tell you its a simple txt string with the OR operator with this example:

1 OR 2 OR 3 OR 4 OR 5

Whilst this will work, its a little clunky and you need to enter the numbers 1 to 9 for each search folder…

What we need is a way to say – “Anything above zero…”

Well, after a lot of Googling, I found the answer – and it was so simple I didn’t think it’d actually work but it does. So what do you need to enter?

This:

[^0]

Yep it’s that simple – and it literally means - Any string that is not Zero..

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/05/17/announcing-exchange-2010-service-pack-2.aspx

One feature that has been long overdue is the ability to segment the GAL so that only certain elements of the GAL are visible to specific groups of users (EG: Only let System Administrator’s see Administrative Accounts…..)

I’ll post a full update once I have applied it to my Lab environment…

After a lot of suggestions about recreating OWA to redirects in IIS and a Web.Config file, i eventually stumbled across this post..

http://www.msexchangeblog.nl/2010/05/11/blank-page-in-owa-fix-for-exchange-2010/

Which basically says to run a powershell script buried within Exchange to update the CAS

Voila! All now up and running..

Everything went as exptected in that it asked me for the computer name (or IP) of the remote machine and it connected fine, after bibbing about the lack of a certificate..

First thing I noticed was the lack of the bar across the top of the screen – not that this is much of an issue.
Moving the mouse to the top or bottom of the screen and right clicking brings up the new App Bar, and allows you to change to another Remote PC..

Now for the annoying bit.. Don’t try using any WIN+<KEY> commands – they wont work on the remote PC..

Pressing the WIN key on its own, suspends the RDC and takes you back to the Metro Start Screen..
Win+R? Forget it – doesn’t work… Win+M (Minimize) – not a chance…
Win+C brings up the charm and you can change the RDC preferences (by that I mean change Display preferences or the RD Gateway address..

If you really want to use the Remote Desktop Connection, then I would strongly suggest switching to the Desktop first then running “mstsc.exe” which behaves like Windows 7, etc…

From what I can gather you can simply extend the Taskbar across (start button on one – and clock on the last..) or  you can have a different taskbar for each monitor!

I haven’t yet tried this, but it sounds like you can have a different taskbar for each screen, with different sets of pinned apps on each one..

I’ll need to have a play and post the results…