A Key Management Server (KMS) system is any server in your environment that you have installed using a KMS key. That’s right, any system—Windows Vista included. I have seen customers […]
Windows Activation: The Basics
Windows Activation, to some, has become confusing and a source of constant trouble. Why? Because they didn’t read the documentation. Gone are the days of simply inserting a CD or […]
Build and Capture and Software Updates
A problem that crops up on the forums every now and then in addition to causing me to pull out some hair is deploying updates during a Build and Capture […]
OSD User Context and Interactivity
As a discovery exercise, I created a small, stand-alone app using AutoIT that displays a dialog box with the current value of the environment variables USERNAME and USERDOMAIN, and then […]
LoadPerf 3011 and Running out of Space on a Hyper-V Guest
Today, I visited a customer that I had installed an evaluation version of Configuration Manager at. 120 days passed a couple of weeks ago and now it was time to […]
Blank Task Sequence Variables
A new feature of Configuration Manager 2007 R2 is the ability to define a Task Sequence Variable on a Collection or individual resource without a value. Then when the Task […]
Error Codes
Administrators new to System Center Configuration Manager (and SMS) are often befuddled by return/error codes from programs delivered using an advertisement. The common question is typically something like “Where can […]
Certificate Templates Replication
Although they’ve been around for a while, certificates are a relatively new thing for administrators to have to deal with. Configuration Manager in Native Mode heavily relies upon them.
DNS Zone Replication
Windows 2003 introduced the ability to move Active-Directory integrated DNS zones from the default AD partition to dedicated partitions. You do this through the DNS MMC snap-in by right-clicking on […]