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

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