Introduction Update 2022-08-15: Added PowerShell commands to configure a Windows DHCP server for PXE boot. Update 2018-04-28: I’ve added the information in this post to a new one completely re-written for Windows Server 2016 here In a previous post PXE Booting for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit I mentioned that I would talk about how to set up PXE to deal with VLANs. To be honest I forgot all about it until someone on twitter reminded me - many thanks for the reminder!

With the release of Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) ISO on the Volume Licensing Service Center, I’ve recently been looking into using the “final” code with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to build reference images and discover what issues are present. This post is a round up of differences and issues I’ve found with building and deploying Windows 10 1703 thus far, and some resolutions. For a full walk through on installing MDT and creating a Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) reference image, check out this post.

Update 2018-04-20: I’ve rolled the information in this post and updated it, into a new post about setting up a WSUS server from scratch on Windows Server 2016 Core. The post is also suitable for a regular Windows Server 2016 server with a GUI. You can read it here. I’ve been dealing with some issues with a WSUS server recently. It services around 1000 devices, mostly Windows 10 with some Windows 7, Windows Server 2016/2012 R2/2012 and 2008 R2.

When deploying Windows 10/11 you might want to remove some of the included Microsoft Store Apps to help speed up the login process, save storage space, bandwidth etc. Important note! A “provisioned app” is an app that is a part of the Windows 10/11 installation and will be available for all users. Otherwise the app is only installed for the currently logged on user. To remove apps for all future users and the currently logged on user, you must remove both types of app.

UPDATE: This post is old and intended as a walk through on how my original script was put together for those wishing to learn PowerShell. For the finished, up-to-date script please check out this post and you can download the script from my TechNet profile. I previously posted a quick and dirty Hyper-V backup script that was very basic but did the job required at the time. I always wanted to revisit it and improve it.

Here’s a quick update on an option I missed in my previous post about how to customise the Start Menu and Taskbar for new Windows 10 1607/1703 installs. Update 2017-05-02: This also works with Windows 10 1703 (Creators Update) The method that I used in my previous post would not be suitable for other environments where you would still want users to have some control over apps that were pinned to the Start Menu.

UPDATE: This post is old and intended as a walk through on how my original script was put together for those wishing to learn PowerShell. For the finished, up-to-date script please check out this post and you can download the script from my Microsoft TechNet profile. Recently I’ve been looking into automating my image build process further using PowerShell to create an Image Factory of sorts. There are other similar scripts that I’ve found online, but I like the relatively simple and straightforward method I’ve developed below.

As we hurtle towards the release of the Creators Update, I decided to take a look at the new OOBE (Out Of Box Experience) that users will see when installing the update. The new OOBE has been a part of the Insider preview builds for some time now. It’s main feature is Cortana support, so you can use speech to go through setup which appears to be as much as a cool and useful feature as it is about accessibility.

You’re probably aware that the Print Screen captures a screenshot and stores it in the clipboard. What you may not know is that Win + Print Screen also captures a screenshot and saves it in Pictures\Screenshots. When you press the key combination, the screen will dim for a second. Man, you learn something new everyday. Additionally if you’re looking for more control over taking screenshots, the awesome Snipping Tool has been in Windows since Windows 7.

Probably the most important thing about troubleshooting anything is having the data on the process. Troubleshooting Task Sequences in Microsoft Deployment Toolkit can be tricky, and has, in the past stumped me for days because I didn’t have, or couldn’t find the right data on what was going wrong. Luckily MDT does have logs - lots of them! During a task sequence they’re kept on the client and by default they’re deleted when the deployment finishes, even if it’s unsuccessful.

I’ve been doing a reasonably large scale Windows 10 deployment recently and I thought I’d feedback on performance of my MDT setup, whilst also taking into account the specification and topology of the network. Below is a screenshot of the times of some successfully completed deployments for reference. As you can see, they’re in the vicinity of around 1hr 30m. Let’s delve into the specs of everything. Windows Server 2016 Standard w/ Desktop Experience 4x vCPU 8GB RAM Dynamically expanding VHDX for C:\ Windows Dynamically expanding VHDX for E:\ Deploymentshare 1x vNIC using the Virtual Host network adaptor The config of the VM is really nothing special, and I could have done some extra work to optimise the configuration.

A feature that I’m very happy to see coming in the Creators Update for Windows 10 is Night light. It’s not exactly a headline feature, but I’m happy to see it and wanted to draw attention to it. What Night light does is change the colour temperature of the display as the sun sets, reducing the blue light and enabling your eyes to relax as you work into the night which, I personally do a lot.

Recently I’ve been looking at my home NAS/media server setup and been wanting to update it. Up until now, I’ve either watched movie and TV show DVD rips locally on my PC or on my Xbox 360/One through the media apps, served via DNLA from my old QNAP NAS. At some point the experience became very slow and clunky, either due to my NAS' DNLA server not being very good or the Xbox One media player app not being very good.