MDT 2013 Windows 10 and the MSP Part 1

March 1, 2017 by Leave a comment

mslogo1I am relatively new to the MDT scene. I did use it before on a project to deploy around 60 Windows 7 machines but, knowing what I know now, I really got the wrong end of what MDT is all about.

Recently I had another project to deploy an amount of machines, in deployment terms a small number (20) but in laziness terms, I didn’t want to walk around 20 computers manually installing things.

Of course WDS (or RIS) has been around since the good old days of Windows 2000 but it doesn’t suit every scenario, and hopefully by the end of this article you will be as much a convert to MDT as I am, because as you will see, MDT is much, much more than an alternative to WDS. Read more of this post

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July Update Rollup KB3172614 and Windows 10

August 5, 2016 by 10 Comments

LEOPARDMicrosoft finally got around to fixing the annoying side effect of Windows 10 release upgrades, which was loosing your Essentials connector.

Hidden away in KB3172614 and after literally months of pressure from Susan Bradley, (because frankly I gave up) we find..

Updated the inbox component in Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials to use the new client connector, so that the inbox component won’t get uninstalled during Windows 10 upgrades.

A simple footnote in the back of KB article hidden downstairs in a filing cabinet behind a door with a sign saying Beware of the Leopard.

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Unable to create a VPN Connection on Windows 10

April 19, 2016 by Leave a comment

metroA friend called me up recently to ask for help with a Windows laptop. It had been running Windows 8.1 and auto upgraded to 10. During the upgrade, or, as a consequence of the upgrade it had lost its VPN connection to the main office.

It would not allow a new VPN connection to be setup either, with the wizard instantly failing after you entered the remote IP address, or, accepting the remote IP Address but sitting on the ‘Creating the Connection’ screen indefinitely. Read more of this post

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Windows 10 Rollback, Office Key Missing

March 15, 2016 by Leave a comment

metroA client emailed this morning to say their PC had automatically upgraded to Windows 10.

They had decided to roll it back because ‘some applications did not work properly’. Which was music to my eyes because I did not want to have to sit through a roll back.

However, when they had gone into Outlook, it was showing as Unlicensed, and prompting them to buy!

I used my favourite Office licensing tool, OSPP.vbs to check the status and found ‘No Product Keys Detected’. Read more of this post

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Quick Fix: Essentials Connector Install Fails after Windows 10 Rollback

December 16, 2015 by Leave a comment

metroI was helping a friend with some Essentials Connector install issues last night. One of the clients was a Windows 7 Pro machine, that had recently been rolled back from Windows 10. On this network the Server was a Windows Home Server 2011, and the connector had been working fine following the upgrade to Windows 10. After the roll back, the backups stopped working, so my friend decided to uninstall the connector and reinstall.

This is when he discovered he could not reinstall the connector. It would get to around 99.9% complete, and even appear in the dashboard, but at the last second the progress bar would start going back to the start and we would see an error on the Connector install screen.

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Small Business Server 2011 Standard–Windows 10

August 17, 2015 by 32 Comments

sbsstdUpdated 15/08/2016

Following a comment below, i revisited and noticed an error in my syntax. Confirming this does indeed work on 10586 (1511) and 14393 (1607)

I recently did a series of posts about Essentials Servers and Windows 10.

I am just picking up on one issue with SBS Standard (2011) where you have to manually edit a file relating to the /Connect process.

Normally this is straight forward, and the instructions on the MS blog post are fine, except it gave me a major OCD headache. Read more of this post

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Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2 – Windows 10

August 6, 2015 by 36 Comments

logoMicrosoft published a helpful blog post and table of the various Client OSs supported by the various Essentials Server versions, and any known issues or workarounds required to get them to work.

I just want to focus on Windows 10 and in a little more detail. In this post we will just be looking at Windows 10 and Server 2012 R2 Essentials.

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