WSUS Maintenance Utility
· ☕ 5 min read
Clean up WSUS WSUS Maintenance Utility is available from: GitHub The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery Please consider supporting my work: Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. Please report any problems via the ‘issues’ tab on GitHub. Thanks -Mike Features and Requirements It’s designed to run either on a WSUS server itself or can be run from a remote machine. The computer that is running the utility must have the WSUS management PowerShell modules installed.
Image Factory Utility
· ☕ 8 min read
Automate Creation of WIM Files Image Factory Utility is available from: GitHub The Microsoft PowerShell Gallery Please consider supporting my work: Support with a one-time donation using PayPal. Please report any problems via the ‘issues’ tab on GitHub. Thanks -Mike Features and Requirements This utility is designed to run on a computer with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit installed. The computer must have either the Hyper-V management PowerShell modules installed, or Virtual Box.
Upgrading to Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) with Windows Server Update Services (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
· ☕ 5 min read
PowerShell based Windows Server monitor 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.
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.
Upgrading PowerShell and Windows Remote Management
· ☕ 1 min read
At the time of writing (2017-07-18) the latest PowerShell available is PowerShell 5.1 which is a part of Windows 10 1607 and Windows Server 2016. To find which version of PowerShell you have, type this command into PowerShell: 1 $PSVersionTable.PSVersion To upgrade PowerShell, you’ll need the latest Windows Remote Management for your version of Windows. You might also need to upgrade WinRM to remotely manage servers using the Server Manager tool, which comes with Windows Server and is a part of RSAT for Windows 10 version 1607 and later.
Building a Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) Reference Image with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
· ☕ 9 min read
Following on from a previous post which covers some queries and issues I had when first deploying Windows 10 1703 (better known as the Creators Update) this post is designed to walk through installing and configuring Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to build a reference image of Windows 10 1703 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 is the most recent release and fully supports Windows 10 1703.

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