3rd Party App Patching in your Home Lab – Patch My PC Home Updater

There are a few companies I really like, Recast Software with their reports and right click tools, 2PintSoftware, leading the way with their peering and delivery optimization tools, and Patch My PC with their amazing patching service. I have a personal lab for testing ideas and staying current with technology. It consists of a HyperV … Read more

Task Sequence Deployment – Popups

So you’re using at Task Sequence to deploy something other than an Operating System, but it’s really important, and you want the popups for “High Risk” like you do with in place upgrades. NOTE: Setting “High Risk” on your TS Properties will move the Deployment in the software center from the Applications Tab, to the … Read more

Test Low Disk Space / Create Large Test File

So I stole this code from my friend Keith G, who provided it to assist with testing scenarios to see if our safe guards would work.
Basically, the 1 line command will check your drive, then create a dynamically sized file to leave “XX” GB remaining.  In my command, I leave only 15GB Free, which is low enough to trigger a failure on our in place upgrades.  Then I can test to make sure the the IPU TS fails the way I expect, running the proper remediation steps, and records the metrics for reporting.

Code: (run in elevated PowerShell Console)

get-volume c | % {$_.SizeRemaining - 15GB} |  % {Fsutil file createnew c:\TestFile.id $_}

So I made it into an App, I’ve added a few items into the app model to allow me to “install” it quickly on a machine to test failure scenarios.

App Code:

powershell.exe -command "get-volume c | % {$_.SizeRemaining - 15GB} |  % {Fsutil file createnew c:\TestFile.id $_}"

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