Michael Niehaus' Windows and Office deployment ramblings
New version of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit released!
A new version of MDT, build 8456, was released today. You can read about all the changes...
Date: 01/26/2019
USB media and Windows Information Protection
If you do lots of Windows deployments, you likely create USB media fairly frequently. But if you are...
Date: 01/25/2019
Assigning Autopilot profiles by exception
I mentioned in my previous blog that I typically use an “All Autopilot Devices” dynamic group to...
Date: 12/30/2018
Evaluating/Testing/Demoing modern deployment with Windows Autopilot
Whether you are evaluating Windows Autopilot for the first time, testing out new features and...
Date: 12/20/2018
Revisiting Windows Autopilot for existing devices
Back in October, I posted a blog talking about speeding up Windows Autopilot for existing devices,...
Date: 12/17/2018
Blocking for app installation using Enrollment Status Page
When you do an Autopilot deployment, we recommend configuring the Enrollment Status Page (ESP) to...
Date: 12/06/2018
Trying out Windows Autopilot User-Driven Hybrid Azure AD Join
With Windows 10 1809 now available, we’ve added new scenarios to Windows Autopilot. You can read...
Date: 11/22/2018
Speeding up Windows Autopilot for existing devices
At Ignite 2018, we announced Windows Autopilot for existing devices, a new feature designed to...
Date: 10/25/2018
A recap from Microsoft Ignite 2018
Another Ignite conference has been completed, and I’m on my way back home to sleep for as long as...
Date: 09/29/2018
New Windows Autopilot resources available
It’s been a busy day for new Windows Autopilot resources. First, we launched a new Windows Autopilot...
Date: 07/13/2018
Autopilot profile assignment using Intune
We’ve had questions over the past several months, as customers scale up with Autopilot, about how to...
Date: 06/13/2018
Deploying a kiosk using Windows Autopilot
In today’s Tech Community blog, we talk about a variety of new Autopilot features. For the...
Date: 06/07/2018
Yet another way to clean up in-box apps
Starting with Windows 10 version 1703, you can now remove provisioned in-box apps like Xbox using...
Date: 06/02/2018
Troubleshooting Improvements in Windows Autopilot
I wrote a couple of blogs (the basics and the more advanced scenarios) about troubleshooting Windows...
Date: 05/15/2018
NEW: Upgrade to Windows 10 1803 without suspending BitLocker
One of the new features mentioned in the What’s new in Windows 10 1803 documentation is a new...
Date: 05/02/2018
Cleaning up apps to keep Windows 10 sysprep happy
As we documented at...
Date: 04/17/2018
Managing Windows AutoPilot devices using the Intune Graph API
A while back, I published a sample script called Get-WindowsAutoPilotInfo, which is designed to help...
Date: 04/16/2018
ConfigMgr task sequences from the internet
After some campaigning and some quick work from the ConfigMgr team for the ConfigMgr tech preview...
Date: 03/14/2018
More on included Windows 10 apps
I’ve stated this publicly a few times, but many people don’t realize the distinction so I’ll repeat...
Date: 03/13/2018
What’s Changed in MDT 8450
Back in December, a new build of MDT was released. Continuing the pattern established with the...
Date: 03/12/2018
Afraid of Windows 10 with Azure AD join? Try it out (part 2)
In the part 1 blog, I talked about the mechanics of joining Windows 10 devices to Azure AD. Now...
Date: 02/21/2018
Starting a new chapter
When I originally accepted a job with Microsoft, just over 14 years ago, I chose the company because...
Date: 02/09/2018
Afraid of Windows 10 with Azure AD join? Try it out (part 1)
I’ve been surprised by the number of organizations that have never tried to join a Windows 10 device...
Date: 01/19/2018
Changing the Hyper-V screen resolution during OOBE
I’ve recorded a variety of videos (especially for Windows AutoPilot, but prior to that for other...
Date: 12/27/2017
Windows AutoPilot Azure AD Branding
When you use Windows AutoPilot to deploy new devices, you want the process to be friendly and...
Date: 12/22/2017
Troubleshooting Windows AutoPilot: Sample ETW Traces
In yesterday’s AutoPilot troubleshooting blog,...
Date: 12/14/2017
Troubleshooting Windows AutoPilot (level 300/400)
In my last post, I talked about issues you might encounter with Windows AutoPilot. But what if you...
Date: 12/13/2017
Troubleshooting Windows AutoPilot (level 100/200)
If you’ve watched the Microsoft Mechanics video or Ignite sessions (presented by Sidd or me) on...
Date: 12/13/2017
Gathering Windows AutoPilot hardware details from existing machines
As discussed in the documentation at...
Date: 12/12/2017
Improved Windows Update Log Formatting with Windows 10 1709
With the release of Windows 10, the Windows Update log changed from a text file to a binary file. A...
Date: 10/10/2017
Changing between Windows SKUs
In one of the sessions that we did at Ignite around Windows 10 Subscription Activation, we included...
Date: 10/09/2017
Windows as a service: Connecting the dots
Since we’ve started talking about Windows as a service (almost three years ago now), we’ve published...
Date: 10/06/2017
Easily switch from Windows 10 Enterprise to Windows 10 Education
Some of you may have seen me do a demo at previous events showing how you could change from Windows...
Date: 10/03/2017
Using Dynamic Update with WSUS to install Windows 10 feature updates
When you install Windows 10 using SETUP.EXE, or any time you install a new feature update either...
Date: 09/30/2017
#WaasInANutshell
Our goal overall with the changes that we made to the Windows as a service terminology was simple:...
Date: 08/09/2017
Quick workaround for ADK 1703 issue
If you read about the issue with the ADK 1703 release that Aaron blogged about here, you know that...
Date: 05/16/2017
Windows Updates: What’s in a name?
If you looked in WSUS or ConfigMgr recently, you may have noticed that the naming pattern for some...
Date: 05/09/2017
Finding Windows 10 Language Packs
2018-05-07: Reworked to show Windows 10 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803 language packs together. Removed...
Date: 04/26/2017
Moving from BIOS to UEFI with MDT 8443
If you watched the Microsoft Mechanics video on MBR2GPT, the new tool for converting disks from MBR...
Date: 04/14/2017
Hiding pages in Settings with Windows 10 1703
A common request from organizations is to have a way to hide some of the pages inside the Windows 10...
Date: 04/13/2017
Removing “Contact Support” app
It seems a lot of blogs start off as either e-mail or IM conversations – this one is included in...
Date: 03/22/2017
Deploying Nano Server using MDT
As you may be aware, the Nano Server installation option for Windows Server 2016 is unique – you...
Date: 01/11/2017
Windows 10 1607: Keeping apps from coming back when deploying the feature update
For those of you that have deployed Windows 10 1511, you're probably already starting to work with...
Date: 08/23/2016
Windows 10, Delivery Optimization, and WSUS: Take #2
01/31/2017: Edited to reflect a change in the minimum disk size. I had posted an article about...
Date: 08/16/2016
Using WSUS with Windows 10 1607?
Note: Consider this post obsolete and replaced by...
Date: 08/08/2016
Windows 10 1607 downloads available on VLSC
With the release of Windows 10 version 1607 (a.k.a. the anniversary update), we’ve posted the volume...
Date: 08/04/2016
In the NYC area on Friday, March 25th?
I’ll be at the Microsoft office in Times Square presenting on Windows 10 and Windows as a service at...
Date: 03/23/2016
Documentation updates for Windows 10 1511
The team responsible for creating Windows documentation was very busy, creating new documentation...
Date: 03/10/2016
Building a provisioning package to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise
With Windows 10 Mobile, we’ve released a new SKU called Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise that has a few...
Date: 02/23/2016