Hyper-V Backup Utility
· ☕ 11 min read
Flexible Hyper-V Backup Utility For full change log and more information, visit my site. Hyper-V Backup Utility is available from: GitHub The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery Please consider supporting my work: Sign up using Patreon. Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. If you’d like to contact me, please leave a comment, send me a tweet or DM, or you can join my Discord server. -Mike Features and Requirements The utility is designed to be run on a Hyper-V host.
Windows 10 1709 Fall Creators Update Deployment Preview
· ☕ 2 min read
I’ve been testing a preview build of Windows 10 1709 - the Fall Creators Update with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and putting it through a few task sequences. I’m happy to say that I’ve not encountered any issues, which I did with previous updates. Keep reading for more info on my testing below. The main point of this post is just to say that when the time comes to deploy the Fall Creators Update with MDT, you shouldn’t encounter any issues.
On-Prem AD User Creator Utility
· ☕ 5 min read
Configurable Script For Creating On-Prem Active Directory User Accounts For full change log and more information, visit my site. On-Prem AD User Creator Utility is available from: GitHub Please consider supporting my work: Sign up using Patreon. Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. If you’d like to contact me, please leave a comment, send me a tweet or DM, or you can join my Discord server.
3D Maze Remix - Update v1.1
· ☕ 2 min read
Update v1.1 Now Available in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 Download for Windows, Mac and Linux I’ve been working on an update to 3D Maze Remix - a small game I made based on the Windows 95 screensaver: 3D Maze. This update focuses on making the game more of a complete package. I’ve focused on improving the look and feel to be more consistent and more accurate to the source material.
Windows 10 1709 (Fall Creators Update) Available 17th October 2017
· ☕ 1 min read
I don’t usually do these news-type posts (plenty of other blogs for that) but here we are… The next major update of Windows 10 version 1709 also known as the Fall Creators Update has been announced for 17th October 2017. As with 1703 (Creators Update), it will roll out over Windows Update in phases and for those of us who’ll be wanting the .iso from the Volume Licensing Service Center, it should be available very close to the main release date.
WSUS Maintenance Utility
· ☕ 5 min read
Clean up WSUS For full change log and more information, visit my site. WSUS Maintenance Utility is available from: GitHub The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery Please consider supporting my work: Sign up using Patreon. Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. If you’d like to contact me, please leave a comment, send me a tweet or DM, or you can join my Discord server. -Mike Features and Requirements It’s designed to run either on a WSUS server itself or can be run from a remote machine.
Image Factory Utility
· ☕ 7 min read
Automate Creation of WIM Files For full change log and more information, visit my site. Image Factory Utility is available from: GitHub The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery Please consider supporting my work: Sign up using Patreon. Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. If you’d like to contact me, please leave a comment, send me a tweet or DM, or you can join my Discord server. -Mike
Upgrading to Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) with WSUS
· ☕ 7 min read
As Windows is now delivered ‘as-a-service’ with major updates being released biannually, you may want to push out these major updates using WSUS. In previous posts I’ve covered deploying Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) as a clean install with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and also how to perform an upgrade to Windows 10 1703 using MDT. In this post, I’ll walk through the process of pushing out the upgrade to Windows 10 1703 using WSUS.
App Spotlight: Groove Music
· ☕ 5 min read
Update 02/10/2017 The Groove Music service is being discontinued, here’s the blog post from Microsoft covering the details. A small home project I’ve been working on recently is trying to consolidate all my personal music files along with deciding on a streaming service. Up until now I’ve only had my music files on my main PC and used Spotify along with a monthly subscription for tracks not in my personal library, but I really wanted one place to host my personal collection and also have access to a streaming catalogue.
Windows Server Status Monitor v1.7
· ☕ 5 min read
I wanted to create a lightweight and easy to setup server status monitor. It needed to highlight any metrics that were outside of a customisable threshold visually and be able to e-mail the report or run continuously. Based on a script from Bhavik Solanki (on TechNet) and with some help from my good friend, and software developer Dan Price, we created WinServ-Status, now known as Windows Server Status Monitor. This utility is available to download from the Microsoft TechNet Gallery, PowerShell Gallery and GitHub.
Upgrading to Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
· ☕ 8 min read
If you’re looking to deploy the latest version of Windows 10 1703 (better known as the Creators Update) as a fresh install, please check out this post. This post is designed to walk through installing and configuring Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and to create a Task Sequence to upgrade to Windows 10 1703 from a previous version of Windows. The Windows upgrade process has come along way in recent years, so in certain circumstances it may be worth while running an upgrade, rather than a wipe-and-load.
Building a Windows Server 2016 Reference Image with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
· ☕ 7 min read
In a previous post I walked through how to install MDT, it’s dependencies, and how to create a reference image to deploy. In this post I’ll be doing the same thing but centred around building a Windows Server 2016 image using a Hyper-V virtual machine. Installing & Configuring Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Dependencies. We’ll be using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) version 8443, which (at the time of writing: 24/07/2017) is the most recent release and fully supports Windows Server 2016.
E-mail Anywhere In Your PowerShell Scripts
· ☕ 4 min read
In my previous scripts I’ve included a function to send log files to an on-premises Exchange server. I’ve now put together an example script to improve this function to send emails to external e-mail providers, for example: Office 365, Outlook.com or GMail.com. This new code is designed to support many different requirements: No logging at all. Logging but with no e-mail. Logging with e-mail. E-mail with username & password authentication, with SSL.

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