Windows Deployment
Windows 11 Customisation
· ☕ 3 min read
Windows 11 is very similar to Windows 10 is terms of technology and core services, however with the new UI and Start Menu refresh there are some new elements that you may want to remove. Start Menu Layout Microsoft now expects the Start menu layout to be managed by an MDM service, if you want to do it without that then the easiest method is to copy the start.bin files.

Disable The News and Interests Bar in Windows 10
· ☕ 2 min read
The New News and Interests Bar for Windows 10 In the June updates for Windows 10 the News and interests bar has been rolled out to Windows 10 and is enabled by default. If you want to disable it as a user, it’s easily done by right-clicking on the Taskbar > News and Interests > Turn off. Job done. 👍 Registry The registry entry for the setting is per-user and is located here:

Deploy Windows 10 21H1 Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Build and Capture Windows 10 21H1 Reference Image
· ☕ 10 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Start Menu and Taskbar Customisation
· ☕ 3 min read
For Windows 11 please check out this post It’s been a long while since I last posted about how to customise the Windows 10 Start Menu and Taskbar for new users when deploying images, so it’s time to fix that! The first thing we need to do is setup what we want our Start Menu to look like and export it. Log on to a Windows 10 machine that has all of the software you want to be pinned on the Start Menu layout and customise the Start Menu as you want it.

Deploy Windows 10 20H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Build and Capture Windows 10 20H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 10 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Deploy Windows 10 2004 (20H1) Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An essential update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes two issues around booting. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. I will add installation instructions in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Build and Capture Windows 10 2004 (20H1) Reference Image
· ☕ 10 min read
News and Updates An essential update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes two issues around booting. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. I will add installation instructions in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Quick update: Windows 10 2004 (20H1)
· ☕ 1 min read
Update 2020-06-13: An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released. This update fixes the boot loop issue and replaces Johan’s workaround with an officially supported fix. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. I will add installation instructions to the walkthrough here. Hi all, So far I’ve had no success with building and capturing a Windows 10 2004 image with MDT and the 1903 ADK (including WinPE) or the pre-release ADK and WinPE.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit for the Enthusiast, Home or Small Business
· ☕ 9 min read
This article is directed towards enthusiasts, IT professional’s for small businesses, or anyone who wants to create custom images and doesn’t have volume licensing, an Active Directory domain, or a lot of server infrastructure. I hope this article is useful to you, if it is please consider supporting my work with PayPal. In this walkthrough we’re going to cover: Installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and its dependencies on Windows 10 Home/Pro Edition.

Installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Deploying Windows 10 - From Scratch!
· ☕ 16 min read
If you’ve read my other posts you’ll know that usually I make a post focusing on building a reference image and then another post on deploying that image. This post is very similar but I’m going to streamline things by just covering the installation of MDT, and deploying Windows 10 1909. I have also recently published a video walkthrough covering this. What you’ll need: A server to host the MDT share.

Video Walkthrough: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Deploying Windows 10
· ☕ 1 min read
I’ve made a video walkthrough covering installing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and deploying Windows 10. The video follows my previous posts on the subject, but I’ve added some additional useful information to cover silent application installation and I also touch on driver management. I intend to write a post that covers the same subjects as this video, just to bring all the information together in written form. If you find the video useful I would very much appreciate it being shared around, and don’t forget to like etc.