As it's been around for years, I'm still surprised at how often I find someone who hasn't at least heard of Ninite. This application can possibly save you hours of setup and configuration each time you buy a new computer, or rebuild your existing one. Ninite aggregates the most popular freeware on to a single web page, …

I've had the opportunity to play in the Google Domains Beta program over the last two months. I submitted my name into the program sometime in late 2014 and was accepted (along with a lot of other people) in December. I moved my first domain over from my current registrar in February 2015 and registered my first new …

One of my distribution points recently stopped getting DP updates. I tried my normal troubleshooting steps - creating a new package, checking disk space, source folder permissions, server reboot, etc., but no dice. I reviewed the DISTMGR.LOG on the primary site responsible for the distribution point, and found the …

Recently I was troubleshooting a Windows 7 Service Pack 1 system where the CCM Client would not install manually or via push. The following was reported in the CCMSETUP.LOG: MSI: Setup was unable to compile Sql CE script file C:\Windows\CCM\CIStateDBUpgrade.sqlce. The error code is 87D00244. MSI: Action 13:27:05: …

I wrote the following queries to find the video resolutions used by clients reporting into SCCM. They currently only look at Windows Workstations 6.x (excludes servers, and also anything older than Windows Vista or whatever v7 ends up being), and only those who have submitted a hardware inventory in the last 30 days. …

I wrote the following script to find inactive computers in Active Directory and then find & delete them from SCCM. Feel free to use & abuse as you see fit, but always run through a test environment first. My version makes sure to target only Windows Operating Systems, and excludes anything with Server in the caption - …

The following query can be run in SQL against your CAS or Primary Site to collect the status of one or more advertisements. I find it useful to run this instead of the built-in reports because I can more easily link out to other sources, in this case my Active Directory Users table (v_r_user) and add/drop data as …

I wrote the following script a few years ago to help me loop over all user profiles to make changes to a configuration file that was stored there. The target systems were all Windows XP and Windows 7 at the time, but I couldn't be certain where the profiles would be (C:\Documents and Settings, C:\Users, D:\Users, etc), …

The Microsoft Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) is an administrative console meant to make it easier for IT Staff to remotely manage the Microsoft licenses on devices on the network. It can deploy and activate keys for products like Windows (both desktop & server platforms) and Microsoft Office. While the …

While there are plenty of benefits to vendors using the Windows Installer, if you've used Windows long enough, and you've installed enough applications, you've probably been plagued by messages such as these: In this post I'm going to talk about why this happens, and steps you can take to resolve it. The primary reason …