WaaS–Post 2–In Place Upgrade TS

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WARNING… WORK IN PROGRESS…  This has been in my drafts for a couple months, I’m pretty busy so I don’t know when I’ll get to polish it, so for now, just publishing it with intent to go back and update it.  Since I wrote this, there has been several changes already, due to advances in CM, finding bugs, etc.  Anyway, because this is really never going to be 100% done, just going to click publish now, so you can start playing with it…
PS.. Mike Terrill is working on a very detailed blog post that will hopefully answer many of your questions as well, but he is waiting for making his more polished, he takes more pride in his blog posts than I do. 🙂

Download the Task Sequences and Content —> HERE <—  I will try to keep that updated as I update my Lab’s TS

Ok, so about a couple weeks ago, I posted the Pre-Cache Compat Scan Task Sequence, in Part 1, now it’s time to go over the IPU.  It’s taken a couple weeks as I keep updating, refining, and finally came to the realization, I could keep tweaking this forever and never get around to posting.  So, I figured, I should just post this, even if it’s not 100% complete.  Just this should be pretty helpful to many.

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Update CCMCache Size via PowerShell

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Super short post, just more for self-documenting. I found tons of scripts out there to do this, but they all required having to reset ccmexec before the cache size updates.  So… if you do it from the control panel, you don’t have to reset the service…  what were those scripts doing wrong, that the control … Read more

Automatically Capture Hard Blocker

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This was one of Keith S. Garner’s (@keithga1) gifts to me before he parted ways on his new adventure.  I asked him for a script to automatically pull the Hard Blocker from the compatdata XML file created during the Windows 10 compatibility scan.  After I gave him my request, he hit me up on skype about 2 hours later and said he didn’t write a script, he wrote me a 1 liner.  Keith knows how much I like 1 liners.  Why?  Task Sequences!  If I don’t have to have content to accomplish a step, all the better!  I’ve been known to build scripts on the fly using echo >> script.bat then running the script.bat file just so I don’t have to have content.

So what’s this magic 1 line of code?  I’m getting to that.

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Customize SetupComplete.cmd and SetupRollback.cmd

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Why?  Ever want to run a few tasks after upgrade, or more importantly, ensure a few things happen if the upgrade goes south and rollsback?  Why not hitch a ride on what ConfigMgr is doing natively and add a few things you need.

Supported?  Highly unlikely.  Please test, and please don’t say “Gary did it” as rationalization when someone asks why you decided to do this.

Do you do it?  Heck yes I do, in my lab.  Need to get a little more test results before implementing in Production

How do you use it?  I’m not telling! Oh wait, that’s why I’m blogging.  I modify the SetupRollback.cmd to ensure the machine is pulled out of provisioning mode when it the upgrade rolls back, and to set a registry key for our reporting, and trigger hardware inventory.

Update 2020.09.23 – Added Post about how Windows 10 calls SetupComplete.cmd

More background.
ConfigMgr has two files in the c:\windows\ccm folder that it uses:

  1. SetupCompleteTemplate.cmd
  2. SetupRollbackTemplate.cmd

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Windows 10 Lock Screen

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So, you think you’re setting the lock screen, just to have OSD finish and be like “Why is the lock screen missing and showing a dark blueish color?” or “Argh, it’s the stinking Windows default lock screen, not the one I wanted”. Perhaps you have a lab, and don’t activate your PC’s, so you get the rotating Bing Picture of the day, which is actually pretty cool and all, unless you’re trying to test Lock Screens.  Thanks to Doug (managedoug.com) for bringing this to my attention and having me dig into it a bit more.

I’ve got Several Steps to control this during OSD which include Copying Files over the default lock screen images, and setting registry keys, basically depends on exactly what outcome you’re looking for.

Scenario 1, you want to set the Lock Screen and NEVER allow the user to change it.

Scenario 2, you’re cool with the user changing it, but want to set it to your own custom default.

To accomplish both, there are several things in common you need to do, so I’ll start with the steps you need to do for either situation, then break apart the single additional step that enables scenario 1.

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