Task Sequence Variables

Update 2018.12.24 – Johan Schrewelius has updated the gather.ps1 script on Technet .He has added several more variables, including the ones I was still needing to completely move away from MDT.  I’ve updated the screen captures to included the additional variables. 2024.4.5 – Updated variable script here: Gather-Script-For-ConfigMgr-TS/Gather.ps1 at main · Josch62/Gather-Script-For-ConfigMgr-TS (github.com) —- Recently … Read more

Run PowerShell ISE as System to Test scripts… From Software Center

Yet another post caused by my recent rebuilding of my lab from scratch after I totally hosed my last CM Server.  This time I’m documenting (blogging) a few additional things. So you write a lot of scripts for ConfigMgr?  Notice that they sometimes don’t perform quite as expected because they run as system instead of … Read more

IPU & Offline Dynamic Updates

—–  Feel free to read to better understand Dynamic Updates, then do yourself a favor and use OSDBuilder —-

UPDATE 7/23/19 – MS just made Dynamic update for 1809 Available via WSUS again. (Before they were only available via MS Updates)    More info about that, and a great read about Dynamic Updates HERE

UPDATE: 8/20/18 – Adam Gross (@AdamGrossTX) added more info and explain even more!  That guys is awesome, really nice walk through on how to do it with a script to automate!  Check it out HERE

UPDATE: 8/17/18 – Heard back from MS.  Rest of those Dynamic Updates need to be applied offline to your Build Media, they are NOT included in the monthly CU. (Read full article for context)

Dynamic updates, what are those things?  Well, as Microsoft says “With Dynamic Update, if you start a computer from an existing operating system (for example, Windows 8), and then run Setup from that operating system [IN PLACE UPGRADE], Setup [Windows 10 Upgrade Setup] can check for new Setup files, including drivers and other files.”  You can enable it in your TS on the Upgrade OS step: (yes, you want to do this if you have bandwidth, way more info HERE, Thanks Adam)
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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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