Sam's IT Knowledgebase

I am currently working on a project to implement Office 365. In the organisation I work for there is a mix of 2010 and 2013 installs. I came across a bit of an issue when Visio would not install. The first step is in your install directory - \\server\share\vispro.ww create an install XML file. The contents of the file I used were as follows: <Configuration Product="ProPlus">  <Display Level="none" CompletionNotice="no" SuppressModal="yes" AcceptEula="yes" />     <Logging Type="standard" Path="C:\Install\Logs" Template="Microsoft Office Visio Standard Setup(*).log" />    <Setting Id="SETUP_REBOOT" Value="NEVER" /> </Configuration> I then created a batch file to uninstall with the following syntax: \\server\source\setup.exe /uninstall Visio /config "\\server\source\vispro.ww\uninstall.xml" I was getting some errors on the log file as ...

I recently came across an issue where a user was suddenly unable to browse through the network places / network discovery in Windows 10. Long story short but they were using an application which you could only browse to folders, so using a shortcut was not an option so they used this feature to browse to the file server shared folders. The fix was kind of simple, on the file server just enable the "Function Discovery Resource Publication" service.

I recently had a request from a user where they wanted everyone in their department to have a particular folder location mapped in their Quick Access location. I came across a Powershell script which is able to do this $o = new-object -com shell.application $o.Namespace('Folder location here').Self.InvokeVerb("pintohome") I did then have further problems with SCCM not being able to deploy this script as it kept coming up with 0x01 error. To get around this I then had to create a package which was a batch file calling the powershell script with the following command: powershell.exe -executionpolicy remotesigned -File "File Location and name.ps1" exit /b %errorlevel% Note when doing this I had to run with the user's rights rather than the local administrators, and also set it to run only when a user is logged on.

I recently just upgraded our SCCM to 1710 and was eager to try out the new feature of setting up child task sequences. However for a while I was confused when I was going to test this out the option I had read about "Run Task Sequence" was missing. I stumbled upon this blog post on WindowsNoob and this explained the issue - https://www.windows-noob.com/forums/topic/15965-how-can-i-enable-the-run-task-sequence-step-in-sccm-current-branch-version-1710/ So in summary you need to go to Administration - Hierachy Settings and enable "Consent to use pre release functions" You then need to enable the Run Task Sequence Restart your console and the changes will apply

When recently undergoing a project in our organisation to update Windows 10 from 1607 to 1703 I came across an annoying issue where after the upgrade process Windows would add the Windows Mail UWP icon to the taskbar. Obviously in a corporate environment this is not a setup which is wanted. I read a bunch of stuff online but things would work fine when running manually, but then when trying to deploy through SCCM it would not work. In the end the only way I got it to work was with information thanks to the following link -  https://www.windows-noob.com/forums/topic/15538-problems-running-a-powershell-script-on-a-task-sequence/ So in summary the steps to fix it were: 1.) Create a powershell script on a network share with the following:            'Uninstall Microsoft Mail and Calendar'             Get-AppxPackage *communi* | Remove-AppxPackage 2.) Setup an SCCM package and choose to create a program with source ...

I was recently required to do an audit of Office software for Microsoft licensing and noticed the SCCM WQL queries did not pick up 64 bit installs of Microsoft Office. After a bit of investigation I read that the normal queries which work (as below) only detect 32 bit software installs. Credit to skissinger from my IT forum for this info: http://www.myitforum.com/forums/Queries-for-32bit-amp-64bit-in-addremove-programs-m232862.aspx 32 bit software query: select SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceID,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceType,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Name,SMS_R_SYSTEM.SMSUniqueIdentifier,SMS_R_SYSTEM.ResourceDomainORWorkgroup,SMS_R_SYSTEM.Client from SMS_R_System inner join SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS on SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.ResourceID = SMS_R_System.ResourceId where SMS_G_System_ADD_REMOVE_PROGRAMS.DisplayName = "Microsoft Office professional plus 2013" 64 bit software query: It's probably the inner joins; because a x86 box won't have any 64 stuff; so nothing to join ...

SCCM - Required Application Not Installing to a collection based on an Active Directory Security Group I recently had an issue where I was trying to install Office 2013 as a required application to a collection based on an AD Security group. This would work fine if I was advertising the install as  'available', however when I set as 'required' it would not install and not even show up in Software Centre. After looking through the Monitoring section in SCCM and had a look at the deployment status I noticed it said success however the Message ID was 10040 and the description was "program will not rerun" I managed to fix this by going to the deployment settings for this collection and then going to scheduling and altering the "Rerun behaviour" to always rerun program.